


if you'd have just told me, i would be home with you

by atdaokai



Category: Gilmore Girls
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, Fix-It, Lowkey Self-Indulgent, after Keg! Max!, alternate take on the Goodnight Gracie bus scene, bc I just want happy literati, goes all the way to end of S3, we’re going for endgame literati here
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-25
Updated: 2020-05-22
Packaged: 2021-03-02 00:55:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 15
Words: 32,905
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23836477
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/atdaokai/pseuds/atdaokai
Summary: An alternate take on Season 3 that doesn't involve Jess leaving on a bus and leaving Rory heartbroken. Also known as an AU in which Jess communicates his problems with school and watches rom-coms and tries to make it up to Rory about missing Stars Hollow prom.
Relationships: Rory Gilmore/Jess Mariano
Comments: 95
Kudos: 168





	1. 1.

**Author's Note:**

> this started out as a fun little thing in my notes app and turned into something. might be a little ooc, but I tried my best! title taken from fka twigs' song home with you :) hope you like it!!

Jess’ leg is shaking as the phone rings, his throat dry. He hopes to God it doesn’t go to voicemail, or worse, Lorelai answers the phone. His nerves are already shot as it is.

“Hello?”

It’s Rory. For a moment, Jess can only breathe. Relief balloons in his chest, but the shaking doesn’t just persist, it intensifies. He jams the phone between his ear and shoulder, digs his lighter out of his pants pocket and flicks it on and off, on and off, focused on the flame.

“Hey,” he says, after an entirely too long beat.

There’s hesitation on the other line. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah.” It’s like he’s choking on silt.

“Okay.” Jess hears Rory’s door snick shut. “Hi.”

Jess leans back a little, eyes tracking the flame as it sparks, appears, disappears. A smile pulls on the corners of his mouth.

“Hi.”

There’s another pause, this one still charged, but with an undercurrent of eagerness, waiting for the other person to speak. Jess almost forgets why he’s calling.

“I need to tell you something,” he says quietly, and even he can hear the pain in his voice, the apprehension.

It’s like he’s stabbed himself with his own knife, twisting and twisting until the pain is unbearable, fresh with each new turn. Disappointment bogs him down, weighs heavy on his limbs. He curls in half, thumb freezing on the lighter. The pad of his thumb is raw from rubbing against the metal wheel.

“I can’t go to the prom,” Jess says. He hates how it sounds, pathetic and sullen. “I couldn’t get tickets.”

“Oh.”

It’s a breath, a gasp, a half-formed reaction, like Jess has personally knocked the wind out of Rory’s lungs. Jess is starting to tremble in earnest now. The phone rattles gently against his cheek, and no matter how hard he tries to still his hand holding the lighter, it quivers.

Jess swallows thickly. “Yeah. Sorry.”

His voice cracks on the last word, and he squeezes his eyes shut. Fuck.

Jess runs his thumb over the grooves of the lighter wheel, swiping it quickly, listening to the sparks jump. His vision is hazy around the edges as he opens his eyes. There’s pressure below his eyes, anxiety wrapped around his chest like a vice.

He desperately wishes he had a cigarette. The last of his stash was buried in the bottom of the trash bin outside the diner from when he’d impulsively decided that he could quit cold turkey if he wanted, he was the captain of his own fate.

That sentiment was feeling a little foolish at the moment.

“Anyways, I just… figured I’d let you know.” His thumb is hovering over the end call button, and he just wants to go, he wants to go.

“Jess?” Rory says, and it makes him ache, the way his name falls out of Rory’s mouth, always a little breathless, but coming from her, it felt like his name was his name.

He wasn’t the mischief maker, wasn’t the perpetual failure. He wasn’t an apparition, an entity aimlessly walking the earth with no real home, no future. Rory was his future, and his name was safe in her mouth.

Jess grunts to indicate he’s heard her, that he’s still on the line.

“Can I come over?” Rory’s voice quavers, the string of a violin bow. “I know it’s late and Luke’s probably closing, but I want… I want to see you.” She pauses, contemplating. “Or… we can meet at the bridge, if you want.”

Jess clears his throat, bowing his head. His body still feels like it’s experiencing the aftershocks of an earthquake from the inside out, but his heart rate is starting to level out, his breathing coming back to him in shallow, short intervals.

“I don’t know if that’s a good idea, Rory.”

There’s a weighted silence. Jess can envision Rory shifting on her feet at the swiftness of being denied, but Rory’s never been one to take no for an answer.

“Please?”

Jess isn’t sure yet, what it is about this girl that can turn him inside out with one word, a split second. The girls he’s been with have always tried to take a mile when given an inch, and it doesn’t bother him much to deny them, because in the end, they don’t care either way what he gives them. Kissing and sex are nothing of consequence to anyone he’s been with, and in the end, it’s satisfactory for both parties involved, but Jess never lets anything go any further when it comes to emotions. Jess never gives more than he can get.

With Rory, he’d give her miles and miles, and he can’t put his finger on why.

“Okay,” Jess replies at last, the word constrictive, binding around his throat. “See you in ten.”

Jess ends the call. He flicks the lighter on, the flames dancing before him in the dimly lit apartment. He passes his hand a hairsbreadth above the tip of the flame, letting the flame kiss his palm, a gentle shock. He inhales and exhales.

Jess blows the lighter out like a candle on a birthday cake, stuffs it in his pocket, and shoves his feet into his boots.

He doesn’t believe in a higher power, but as he walks out the door, he wishes he did.


	2. 2.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There's a mention of the bedroom scene between Jess & Rory during Keg! Max! in this chapter. I tried to handle it as well as I could, since I know it's a scene that many people interpret differently. This is my interpretation of it, and I absolutely respect everyone's takes on it, but I hope you can understand where I'm coming from in my reading of Jess' actions. 
> 
> Also, in this AU I've had Jess agree to take his last year of high school over instead of leaving to California right away, thus giving him more time in Stars Hollow but... California is still on the horizon for him in this little story. I'm aiming for happy! literati because it's what we deserve!! But first... a little bit of angst... im sorry... I was listening to The Way It Was by The Killers while I wrote this.

Rory is already standing at the edge of the bridge bundled up in her red peacoat and a scarf when Jess arrives a mere five minutes later. She’s staring out at the moon’s reflection in the ink black water, arms wrapped tightly around herself.

She looks up when she sees Jess approaching, but the sad, pensive expression on her face doesn’t change.

“I would’ve dressed up if I knew you were gonna look like that,” Jess says, glancing down sheepishly at his henley and sweatpants. He hadn’t remembered to bring a jacket in his stupor, either, and his nose was already beginning to drip like an IV.

Rory licks her lips, sniffling. She doesn’t smile, doesn’t move. “You can’t take me to prom.”

Jess sighs, burying his hands in his pocket. He stares at his shoes, their presence suddenly a godsend to him. “No.”

“Why not?”

Jess winces; Rory’s voice is a knife through the crystalized air, sharp as ice but scalding as forged metal. It rams straight through him, leaving his stomach in shambles.

“I just… can’t.”

Jess wants to turn and run. Hell, he would jump in the lake and risk being beaked by a thousand swans if it meant he didn’t have to explain to Rory that he wasn’t graduating, he was being held back, exactly what she’d warned him about. He couldn’t make good on his promise to take her to prom, the one thing he swore he could do for her. He was failing her in every possible way, and there was no way he could rectify it. He didn’t even know where to start concerning his father, who had shown up out of the blue and subsequently turned his whole world upside down, but that wasn’t the issue at hand. One thing at a time.

They stand in silence, mirrored figures against the black of the night.

“That’s not good enough,” Rory cries out, and Jess’ head snaps up at the tone of her voice, raw and agonizing.

His hands ball into fists. Jess has seen Rory angry, he’s seen her furious, he’s seen her annoyed and exhausted, but he’s never seen her like this. Rory’s face is crumpled, reminiscent of a tragic theatre mask, her mouth pulled down at the corners in a way that seems like she’s exaggerating it. Her chin trembles, but she’s staring at him without care for how she looks or sounds. Rory’s always seemed reserved, like she’s hiding the real pieces of her emotions, but now, Jess can see everything laid out on the table for him to see, and it hurts. It fucking hurts.

“Rory,” Jess says, and it comes out like shattered glass, but he can’t bring himself to care. “I’m sorry.”

“I don’t want ‘sorry!’” Rory exclaims, fury lighting her eyes. “I want to understand. I want to understand why you keep brushing me off when I ask about school, why you can’t go to prom when you promised, you promised you were going to take me. I asked you for this one thing, Jess, this one thing that I want so badly, and you’re taking it back!”

Jess clenches his jaw. Shame digs its claws into his chest and renders him speechless.

“Well?” Rory says, leaning in closer to him.

She scoffs in disbelief when he says nothing, does nothing. He wonders if Rory can hear the earsplitting ringing he’s hearing right then. He wonders if she realizes his knees are buckling.  
“People keep saying you treat me like trash,” Rory says in a broken voice, turning back towards the water. Her tears glint silver in the moonlight. Jess is itching to wipe them away, start over, say _something._

“I keep defending you, saying they don’t know you, they haven’t seen the real you. But maybe…” Rory wipes her nose with the back of her hand. “I don’t know, Jess, maybe I am the idiot. You won’t even talk to me about what you’re feeling, and isn’t that what being a relationship is? Trusting the other person enough to tell them what’s going on, but you never do.”

Jess’ lips part slightly, but no words come. It’s as if his vocal cords have been slashed to smithereens.

Rory faces him, and the sadness is still present in the lines of her face, but the fury in her eyes has been tamped down, replaced with resignation.

“You’re not gonna talk, okay, fine. I don’t care.” Rory sets her jaw and bows her head, obscuring her face with her hair.

Jess finds the strength to move one of his legs forward.

Rory’s head raises at his advancement, as if someone has pressed the power button to her system and booted her back to life.

“Don’t,” Rory screams, and it echoes across the water, rippling the surface.

Rory turns to him, breathing hard. She’s sobbing openly, and when she turns to Jess again, it nearly feels like his blood has stopped in his veins. Rory’s an open wound, tender and exposed and Jess can’t look anywhere else. It’s like watching his own heart be ripped from his body, traumatizing to the point of immobility.

Rory shakes her head. “Screw you,” she whispers, voice softer this time. “And I thought… I thought you might be…” she shakes her head again, like there’s a voice in her head that won’t leave.

_I’m not graduating._

Somehow, the words transfer from his brain to his mouth. The only indication he has of it actually happening is the way Rory’s mouth falls open a little, eyes wide, a portrait of shock.

“Jess,” Rory murmurs, blinking, closing her mouth. Just like that, she softens, no longer alight with anger. Air fills Jess’ lungs; he can breathe again. Rory wipes the tacky, drying tears on her cheeks. “What happened?”

The truth comes pouring out of him like a landslide. The 31 days of absences, taking on more shifts than he could handle, the saving of every single paycheck that he didn’t spend on their movie nights and gas money so that he might actually be able to escape from Stars Hollow and be self-sufficient somewhere that wasn’t there, maybe somewhere closer to Rory when she went to Yale.

Jess catches his breath when he finishes, sitting down on the edge of the bridge, letting his feet swing over the water. Quietly, cautiously, Rory sits next to him. They don’t touch, but Jess can feel her breaths shuddering through her as she exhales, still recovering from crying.

“I’m not asking you to feel sorry for me,” Jess says, staring at his reflection in the water. “I know I didn’t tell you about school, and, and work. I just——” he pauses. “I thought I was fine until they called me in to see Principal Merton and he told me I couldn’t buy tickets. I tried to fight it, but he wouldn’t have it.”

Jess tries to gauge Rory’s reaction, but she gives none at all, continuing to stare emptily out at the water. Jess clears his throat, reaching for his lighter and turning it over in his pocket.

He’s been disappointing people his whole life. Nothing he ever did was good enough for his mother, not straight A’s, not the TV dinners he laid out for her when she was too intoxicated or tired to find food, not practically raising himself on his own so he didn’t have to be her responsibility. It was obvious he was failing Luke, too, which had a certain sting to it that he couldn’t make himself think about for too long.

Disappointing Rory is something different, something strange. He could give her his mind and he could give her his affection, the things that were unfailable to him, protected aspects of himself that never let him down. He was smart, he shared Rory’s interests, and maybe he couldn’t talk, but he could show her other ways of loving, the ways that he’d seen on TV, read about in books.

He’d always thought sex could be way of showing someone what you meant, it was a way of love, a way of catharsis, but it was obvious from what happened the night of that ridiculous party that he’d misunderstood. It could be something cruel, a contorted version of everything it ever meant to him.

He’d meant what he said a few nights ago—- Rory hadn’t done anything. It had been him, trying to find solace, find something else he could give her that wasn’t the prom tickets. He’d known how it looked: the two of them escaping to a room, him, trying to do the one thing he knew how to do, him, being angry that she thought he planned to have sex with her there, when it was the last thing he was thinking about, until she pressed her hand against his cheek in comfort, and he was splitting at the seams.

Then there had been Dean and his apparent inability to stay out of anything Rory-related. Jess couldn’t take it. Dean had punched him, and everything went black as pitch. He hardly remembers anything after that, just pain and adrenaline and misplaced anger.

Rory’s hand is clenching the edge of the bridge, knuckles bony and translucent in the moonlight. Slowly, Jess reaches out to take her hand; hands had always been their comfort point of contact, before a kiss, while in conversation, walking down the street, they always played with each other’s hands. It was a gesture that meant _hello, I’m here, I miss you even when you’re next to me._

But Rory yanks her hand away at the first brush of contact, as though he’s hurt her.

Jess bites his lip and crushes the pain that swells in his chest, clasping his hands in his lap.

“Rory, I…” he trails, knowing how it will come out. It’ll sound like an excuse, a sick excuse.

He tries again, stronger, with more conviction. “That night… I didn’t plan on… doing it with you there, I wasn’t thinking about it. Everybody there was so loud and it was all so stupid, I hated it, I needed to get out of there. I wasn’t ready to tell you about the tickets, and I thought—- I don’t know.”

Jess bites down harder on his lip, wishes it hurt. “I was going to tell you about everything if that son of a bitch didn’t——”

He exhales, his ears beginning to ring again. He faces her, her profile illuminated against the black forest behind her. “I fucked up, Rory.”

Rory sniffs and wipes away more tears that have begun trailing down her cheeks.

Shyly, Rory turns toward Jess, her chin quivering, eyes wet.

“It’s not fair, Jess. It’s not fair that I had to watch you and Dean beat the crap out of each other and watch you walk away from me, and it’s definitely not fair that I had to tell my mom, who loves me more than anyone in the world, that I almost had sex with you, and you got weird and angry when we—-stopped. I get that you weren’t angry with me, but— it felt horrible. It felt really horrible.”

Jess tightens his jaw and keeps eye contact, though it pains him. “I’ll make it up to you.”

He has to, he has to.

Rory’s eyes narrow. “How? How could you possibly make it up to me?”

“I’ll think of something,” Jess says, and he will, he knows he has it in him.

Rory stares at him for a moment before she shakes her head and stands up. Jess can practically see her slipping away from him, but he can’t wake up his body, can’t order it to move.

“Forget it,” Rory spits out.

Jess doesn’t watch her walk away, but he listens as her footsteps echo against the rotting wood of the bridge, the sound replaying in his head long after she’s gone.


	3. 3.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> im honestly just having a good time with this & going with the flow, this is my first published fic and it's been really fun to just... write for fun!!
> 
> this whole chapter is just me going "yes... mhm... jess the town nerd watching romcoms & plotting... for love. excellent."
> 
> anyways I hope you enjoy!!

Jess spends the next week working as much as he can, hopping from shifts at Luke’s to shifts at Walmart. He doesn’t see Rory, but then, he isn’t sure he could stomach seeing her so casually, walking down the street or in the video store. He avoids the bridge, too, even though he knows she wouldn’t go there. He can’t risk it.

When his body has off time, his mind takes up heavy lifting, conjuring up ideas for how to make things right with Rory about missing prom. He fucked up, but he could learn from it, as he had with the Distillers tickets. He doesn’t think of it like a plan to win Rory back, because she never said goodbye, and with Rory, goodbyes seemed to be the nail in the coffin when it came to putting an end to things. 

He does, however, think of it like a way to communicate that he’s in it, he’s trying to be in it. Liz had always been so hot and cold with her love and her care, and it was one thing Jess had unlearned from her; love wasn’t conditional. He tried his best to be unconditional with his affection, not just because it was his way when it came to Rory, but because it meant something to him. His love was scratched out on pages of the novels he gave Rory to read, in the free food he snuck her when she visited the diner after school, in the CDs he brought her to listen to—- he had never felt this way about anyone before. Rory had to know that. She needed to know that.

He watches a lot of movies in his downtime. He watches a lot of rom coms, sappy movies he’d never normally watch, movies he’d succumb to watching per Rory’s request. Movies where the guy confesses his love while drenched in downpour, movies where the girl is hard-headed but sweet. Movies with scenes so sensual and charged it makes Jess think of how Rory would be looking over at him if she were watching with him, pulling faces but blushing, too.

Movies that spark inspiration for how, exactly, he'll reconcile with Rory.

He uses the films as “research” of sorts. Jess doesn’t take notes, because Jess doesn’t take notes for anything besides literature, but he does rewind the tapes more than a few times during pivotal scenes where one half of a couple surprises the other, or does something so kind hearted for the other person it makes everything end in smiles.

It’s awkward when Luke comes trudging up the stairs and finds him scrambling off the armchair, shutting off the TV as soon as Luke opens the door as if he's been caught in an indecent act, but honestly, Jess feels better about Luke thinking he’s watching porn than researching grand gestures of love by using romantic comedies. Luke would never let him live it down.

Jess finds himself enjoying the brainstorming process of it all, a sort of hope sprouting inside him, growing wings. 

Maybe he really could make things right this time around. Instead of running away, he could run headfirst into making things right.

The idea comes to him when he’s stocking the shelves during a night shift at Walmart. 

It’s no John-Cusack-Holding-A-Boombox in Say Anything, or anything close to the scene in 10 Things I Hate About You where Heath Ledger serenades Julia Stiles at the football field, but it’s something.

***

The night the idea reveals itself to him, Jess goes across the street from the diner and finds Lane’s window, a warm red illuminating her room, soft rock music bleeding through the walls.  


After several failed attempts to climb up to Lane’s room to avoid the wrath of Mrs. Kim, Jess tosses a few pebbles at Lane’s window. They ricochet loudly off the glass, making Jess cringe each time he hits his target.  


Lane comes to the window after the third pebble is thrown, pulling back her curtains and frowning when she sees Jess’ face, but she opens the window nonetheless.  


"What do you want, Jess?” Lane hisses.  


Jess gives her a winsome smirk. “I came to borrow another one of your mother’s antiques. That clock you gave me last time was so darn helpful, I thought, ‘Wow, I should see if Lane has an almanac, I need it to——”

Lane folds her arms over her chest, unamused. “Seriously, what is it? My mom could come crashing in here any minute.”

Jess bites his lip, suddenly hesitant about his plans. “It’s about Rory.”

Lane rolls her eyes. “She told me everything. If you think I’m going to help you get out of this, you’re crazy.”

Jess clenches his jaw, turning away from Lane for a moment, a sinking feeling beginning in his chest. He should’ve known Rory wouldn’t keep anything from Lane, not for a second.  


He turns back to Lane, who, miraculously, hasn’t slammed the window in his face just yet.

“It’s to make up for the prom, okay. And for being such a jerk.” Jess says in a secretive voice, as if Rory might pop out of the bushes at any moment. “Rory really wanted to go to prom, and yeah, I think it’s stupid, but look——” Jess rubs his jaw, pinches his lower lip in frustration. 

He glances down at the ground before finding the courage to look up at Lane again. “I know I’m not your favorite person right now, but I need your help.” 

Humiliation churns in his stomach. Normally he’d be too prideful to beg like this, but he reminds himself that if he would beg for anyone, it would be for Rory. 

Lane quizzically raises her brow, the scowl still on her face. “And what, exactly, do you need me for? I have tickets, you know. I’m going to the prom with Dave.”

Jess scoffs. “C’mon, Lane, we both know you don’t like these lame-o dance things. You know you’re gonna hate all the Top 40 music the school plays, plus, you’re gonna miss Rory. Why go through that when we can do something better, you, me, Rory, and Dave?”

Jess has piqued Lane’s interest; her eyebrows relax from their scarily sharp arch. 

“You, Jess Mariano, are willingly planning a social event?”

Jess rolls his eyes. “It’s not a social event if it’s just you, Rory, and Dave.”

Lane’s lips curl into an amused smile. “What’s in it for me?”

Jess grins; he’s got her attention now. “Not much. Just Rory, good food, and good music.”

“I’m in.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> jess & lane working together to make rory feel loved and happy bc they love her is my whole jam. in my world these three (and occasionally dave) just sat around and talked (debated) about music. jess & rory probably had movie nights with lane too... @ asp I Would Like To See It. also @ asp why did u never give us the real jess x rory x lane x dave friendship we deserved??? like i know why, but... why???
> 
> i hope you enjoyed this part as much as i enjoyed writing it!


	4. 4.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i've ended up writing this in small pieces bc i think it's going to be relatively short... i say that now but it'll probably end up being longer than i expect...
> 
> i'm giving you lane/jess friendship realness in this chapter. this is whole chapter is how the idea for this fic really took off, & also why i consider it self indulgent... you'll see.
> 
> enjoy!!

“This is definitely going to be the most teen heartthrob thing you’ve ever done.”

“I’m gonna have to ask you to never use the words ‘teen heartthrob’ in reference to me ever again.”

Lane flicks a potato chip at Jess, who narrowly avoids the flying object by twisting out of the way. 

“Jeez! I’m trying to clean here!”

Lane grins savagely. “Great! Pick that up for me, would you? I was trying to get it into the trash can, but I missed.”

“I can kick you out, you know.”

“But you won’t,” Lane counters, and he can’t say anything to that.

After their exchange the day before, they agreed to meet at the diner. Jess had let Lane in during closing; Luke had gone out for a drive, and as soon as the coast was clear, Lane had sprinted across the street and into the diner. Jess closed the blinds, flipped the sign on the door to ‘Closed,’ gave Lane some snacks, grabbed cleaning supplies, and got to work on closing up the diner for the night. They had been talking for a good half hour, Jess simultaneously cleaning while Lane tore through the snacks her mother would never let her have at home. Most of their conversation consisted of skirting around the real reason for their meeting, which was, of course, Rory, and Jess’ plan. 

It was only when Lane asked outright what it was Jess planned to do that he confessed it— he wanted to throw Rory a smaller, makeshift prom on the same day of the Stars Hollow High prom. He’d set it up on the bridge and they would have their own thing, Rory, him, Lane, and Dave. 

Lane thought it was very cute, and the “teen heartthrob” comment followed.

Jess doesn’t really think of it like that. He isn’t doing it to look good— he never did anything to “look good.” He didn’t return Rory’s bracelet to look good— he’d tried to return it in secret so it wouldn’t become a big deal, and he wouldn’t have to be asked about how he had it in the first place. He didn’t show up on Rory’s doorstep with a box full of food when her mother was gone out of a need to seem kind— he knew Rory couldn’t cook, but mostly, he’d just wanted to see her. Both of those instances, of course, somehow turned into situations that reflected poorly on him. 

But it had never been about being someone he wasn’t, about seeming like a good person. It was about doing right by Rory, it had been from the moment they met.

“You and Dave can make a mixtape, right?” Jess starts to put the chairs up onto the tables. “But no Coldplay, no Smashing Pumpkins.”

“Coldplay is great. You’ll never stop being wrong about that.”

“Gee, I’m so hurt,” Jess answers, scoffing. “Everything else is free game. I trust you.”

“I’m flattered,” Lane says sarcastically, matching the tone of his initial response. “So Dave and I will take care of the mixtape, but what about everything else? What kind of decorations are you thinking of? Please, tell me you’ve thought about decorations. It’s not prom if everything isn’t obnoxious.”

It’s a little strange to see Lane so eager to help him, instead of verbally sparring with him, as she often did. When they first met, she found him annoying at best and a terrible person at worst. Now, they were almost... friends.

Jess rubs the back of his neck. “I was thinking about getting lights. You know, like the ones people string up at Christmas. I thought I could—“ Jess cuts himself off, suddenly embarrassed.  


His heart is pounding, and the way Lane’s listening so intently to him, refusing to break eye contact, isn’t helping. “It’s stupid. Maybe this is stupid.”

Lane frowns. “It’s not stupid. It’s really sweet, Jess. Especially with everything that’s happened, Rory needs something good. And she needs it to come from you.” Lane is quiet for a moment, staring down at the table. “You really hurt her, you know.”

Jess doesn’t say anything for a few seconds, just puts up another chair, taking quiet deep breaths.

“It wasn’t her fault I got angry that night. I was just... angry at myself, at Principal Merton, at how much I’d messed up. I’m not sorry about Dean, screw him, but I would never actually— I would never force her—“

It makes his head hurt to think about. When he turns to be level with Lane’s gaze, he’s surprised to be met with sympathy. 

“I know,” Lane says simply. No quips, no sarcasm, no suggestion that Lane believed otherwise. Just... _I know._

And she did. She and Jess had spent enough time together that she had been able see him for what he was, and he wasn’t what the town had painted him to be. 

He was just a kid who had a lot of feelings he had to work through, just like any other teenager in any part of the world, and he didn’t quite know where to put all that _feeling_ down, or how to show it well. Jess was a lot of things, not all of them saintly, but he wasn't the devil. Lane would know. She'd been preached at about the devil her whole life.

Jess nods, a small jerk of his chin. “I was thinking I could rig the lights using the street lamps at the bridge, make it look...” Jess makes a gesture like flashes of light.

“Like stars?” Lane supplies.

“Yeah.” Jess clears his throat. “The theme for the dance _is_ Starry Night, isn’t it?”

Lane beams smugly. “You don’t actually sleep through the morning announcements, I knew it.”

Jess rolls his eyes, heat warming his neck. “How could I, with that stupid bell chime rattling my brain at 8 in the morning?”

“I didn’t know you were paying attention to any of it. I thought you were only going to the prom for Rory.”

Jess glares at Lane as he goes behind the counter and puts the rags away. 

“I am— I was,” he corrects. “So I know the theme,” he says dismissively. “I can hear and I can read the flyers they put up all around campus, that’s it.” 

Lane’s smile only grows wider. “That’s the look you’re going for? Starry Night?”

Jess shrugs. “Rory liked it, right? Thought it was cool.”

He turns his back to Lane, pretending to tidy things up behind the counter.

“You sure do pay a lot of attention even when it seems like you’re not,” Lane says nonchalantly.

“What’re you getting at, Lane?” Jess asks irritably. He doesn’t like the haughty undertone of her voice, like she’s caught onto something he hasn’t.

Lane props her chin in her hand. “She said that once, and she didn’t even say it to you. She said, to me and Dave, and I quote, ‘I guess it’s cool. Cliche, but cool.’”

Jess huffs, throwing her an expression of disbelief and agitation. Lane laughs a little.

Without another word, he disappears into the kitchen, swiping two cans of soda from the fridge.

He tosses one to Lane as he reemerges from behind the curtain. She catches it with an uncanny ease, glaring at him.

“You really know how to avoid a conversation, don’t you?”

“They do call me Gatsby on the streets for a reason,” Jess quips, pulling out a chair.

He whips it around so he can straddle it, resting his arms on the back of the chair.

“Yeah, maybe ‘cuz you’re arrogant and evasive,” Lane grumbles. “I don’t think I’ve seen you care this much about anything. Like, you actually care whether Rory likes it.”

Jess knows it’s pointless to argue it, so he doesn’t. He pops open the tab of his soda and takes a drink instead, allowing the moment to pass.

“I’ll do most of the setup. It’s the getting her to agree to go without telling her about everything that’s the hard part.”

Lane follows his lead and takes a long sip of soda. Her eyes almost immediately light up, like the sugar rush is a shot of adrenaline. 

“I’m guessing that’s where I come in.”

Jess nods. “Just make something up, nothing too detailed. You, Dave, and Rory can meet me at the bridge.”

Lane purses her lips, furrows her brow. “So she agrees to go and somehow we get her there, but what about... you and her? She’ll probably be angry if she sees you out of the blue acting like nothing happened.”

Jess chews on his bottom lip. “I’ll take care of it. I’ll make sure she doesn’t push me in the lake the second she sees me.”

Lane looks skeptical. “Are you sure you can pull this off? Last time we tried to team up and sneak around, I ended up puking in the bushes and you got punched in the face at the end of the night.”

“I got it.” Jess assures her, feeling a shiver run up his spine at the mention of the fight with Dean. He attempts to turn the mood of the conversation, which is starting to sour. “And with any luck, both of us will be puking at the end of the night.”

Lane grimaces. “No alcohol for me. Not for the next 4 years, thank you. Drink all you want, but I’m definitely going to be stone cold sober.”

Jess shakes his head. “I could teach you my ways, Lane. You’re missing out.”

Lane makes a move like she’s going to fling another potato chip at him.

Jess holds up his hands. “I’m kidding! I could care less whether or not you drink. It’s overrated, if you ask me.”

Lane’s unconvinced. “Whatever, Kerouac. Keep talking about the plans. What else are you thinking?”

Jess launches into his other ideas for the makeshift prom on the bridge, talking more than he’s talked without a break... ever. Lane listens with minimal interjections, suggesting other ideas for decorations and throwing out different songs to include in the mixtape. 

Together, they flesh out the day of the prom by the hour— who will be where and when, what needs to be done by certain times.

It’s the first time Jess feels confident in a plan, in an idea that he’s come up with. Most of his decisions are impulses, leaps into the dark with no thought for where he’ll land. He’s always flying too close to the sun, thrilled by the uncertainty of his actions.

But this— the feeling of his own plan, his own cheesy, ridiculous romantic gesture so readily falling into place— he thinks he might be chasing the high of it for the rest of his life.

In every other aspect, his life was filled with questions that went unanswered. He didn’t know whether his mother truly cared about him at all; she’d barely spoken to him since he returned to Stars Hollow. He didn’t know what the hell to think about his father, and he had no clue where he stood when it came to high school or his future.

But he knew Rory. Rory, who believed he was capable of more than he thought he was. Rory, who tried so hard to trust him when no one else would give him the benefit of the doubt.  


Rory, who now held his heart in the palm of her hand, and who, he was beginning to realize, would probably hold it forever. 

If the rom-coms had taught him anything, it was that sometimes, you had to put your pride aside for the person you loved, do something you would never do in a million years, if it weren’t for that one person.

For Jess, Rory was that person.

For Jess, Rory would always be that person.

****

That night, Jess digs through his boxes of books in the dark, careful not to wake Luke. He unearths Emma by Jane Austen from a box with several books that had gone untouched for a good while.

He thumbs through the yellowed pages, his notes few and far between. He had been 10 when he first read Emma. 

Love was a concept so abstract and removed from his daily life that he hadn’t really known what to make of Knightley’s “If I loved you less, I might be able to talk about it more” declaration when he was young.  


But as he reads it now, at 18, he feels— he feels as though he understands. He pulls a pen from his desk, underlines the line. To the side, he writes, _Just because I don’t say things doesn’t mean I don’t want to tell you about them. Sometimes silence means something too._

He rips a little piece of paper out from a spare notebook. Scribbling onto it, he tucks the folded message between the pages of the book. 

He sneaks out of the apartment and drops the copy of Emma on the porch of the Gilmore house, the message he’d written pulsing in his skull as steadily as his own heartbeat.

_I’m a man of my word. -J_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> catch me mentioning austen's "if i loved you less, i might be able to talk about it more" bc since emma (2020) came out i've been going CRAZY. i think it fits our boy jess pretty well, rory was right when she said that boy needs a thought bubble over his head at times... plus, he did say he'd read austen so hopefully that whole end part isn't too ooc.


	5. 5. rory's interlude

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so... this part was a little out of the blue! it came to me yesterday & i thought... might as well go along with it! kinda nervous cuz im not sure whether it really has a place in the story, but hopefully you like it!!

Rory finds the copy of Emma on the porch the next morning.

Her breath gets caught in her throat, her heart thumping as she leans down to pick it up. 

The copy is old, a little tattered. She turns to the title page, feeling her chest prick with pain when she does.

In very small, familiar script are the words _Property of J. Mariano._

Rory’s hands begin to tremble as she flips through the pages, surprised to find most of the pages pristine, not marked with Jess’ scrawl, his thoughts. As she goes farther into the book, she finds a slight raise beneath one of the pages, and turns it curiously.

Rory reads the underlined line first, the singular note in the margin. Tears sting behind her eyes, but she keeps her emotions at bay, taking the folded scrap of paper and opening it with careful fingers.

She stares at it for what feels like a very long time.

“Hey, Mom?” she calls out when she finally finds her voice.

“Yeah, babe?”

“I think I’m done with my Luke’s boycott.”

Lorelai responds after a pause. “I thought you didn’t want to go over there because of—“

Rory arranges the note back between the pages. “I know,” she interrupts, a little too loudly. “But... I think I’m okay now. I can’t just never go over there again. It’s Luke’s.”

Rory goes back into the house, holding the book against her chest. Lorelai stands at the toaster, just having pulled Poptarts out for breakfast. Lorelai turns, takes in Rory’s appearance and the book, and smiles.

“Sure, we can go. Everything okay?”

Rory nods. “Yeah.”

Lorelai pouts slightly, obviously feeling sympathetic. “You don’t have to talk to him, hon. You don’t even have to act like he exists.”

Rory nods again, too overwhelmed to speak right away. 

Lorelai goes over to Rory, wrapping her in a hug before smoothing back her hair and kissing her forehead. Lorelai rests her cheek against the crown of Rory’s head, holding her tightly.

“Thank God you’re ending your boycott,” Lorelai says dramatically. “I was getting really worried that we would become 3% Poptart if we kept this up. Like, the doctor would take our blood and tell us, ‘I think you’ve become mutants.’”

“We’re probably already 3% Poptart,” Rory says quietly.

“You’re right,” Lorelai replies, in her signature chipper tone. “Let’s hurry. I want pancakes.”

****

The second Rory and Lorelai step into the diner, Jess vanishes into the back. Rory doesn’t even really see him, just the blur of his dark hair, his lithe form there and then gone, like a shadow.

She swallows the lump in her throat as she and Lorelai take a table. 

Luke approaches them not a minute later.

“Long time no see.”

“Yeah, well.” Lorelai says with a smile. “I was starting to get coffee withdrawals. Speaking of which, 5 cups, please. And pancakes. For me. Rory?”

Rory looks up from her menu. She doesn’t even need it, but her gaze is being pulled to the doorway that leads to the apartment as though by an invisible magnet, and she needs something to keep her grounded. Her palms are starting to sweat.

“I’ll have the same,” Rory splutters unthinkingly. 

Luke’s eyebrows raise the tiniest bit. “Got it.” He turns halfway before he comes back to the table. “Hey, have you talked to Jess? He’s been real moody lately— well, that kid’s always moody—“

“Hey Luke, what if I asked you to stick a patty in between two sprinkle doughnuts?” Lorelai says quickly, making knowing eye contact with Rory before staring up at Luke with wide, excited eyes. “Would you do it?”

“You’re certifiably insane,” Luke answers, switching his attention to Lorelai. “Absolutely not.”

“C’mon,” Lorelai whines, egging him on. “We haven’t been here in a week, I need to catch up on my diner food intake.”

“No,” Luke says firmly. “Anyways, do you want me to call that punk out here?” This, he directs to Rory.

Rory shakes her head hard. “No, no. It’s okay.”

Luke studies her for a moment, but Rory keeps a slight, reassuring smile plastered to her face to deter his suspicion.

“Alright,” Luke relents at last. “I’ll start on your order.” Lorelai opens her mouth to say something, but Luke is faster. “No, I’m not making you that monstrosity, don’t even try. And both of you only get one cup of coffee, no arguments.”

Lorelai scowls at Luke’s back as he walks away. Rory is just glad he isn’t looking at her like she’s underneath a magnifying glass. 

Lorelai keeps Rory distracted with the latest shenanigans happening at the inn, but Rory still notices when Luke eventually forces Jess to come back down into the diner to refill coffees and dish out orders. 

They both pretend the other isn’t in the room, heads down, gazes averted. But when Jess comes to take the order of the table next to them, Rory catches a clear glimpse of his face.

His eyes are a little bloodshot, purple shadows beneath his eyes. So he really had gone to her house late last night to leave her the copy of Emma. Rory wonders whether or not he had been planning give it to her for a while, or if it had been spontaneous.

Rory thinks a little too hard, stares a little too long, as she always seems to when it comes to Jess. Jess’ eyes meet hers, and she freezes. She can’t even look away. His mouth twists into a soft smirk, and Rory flushes, blood rushing in her ears. She instinctively ducks her head.

She doesn’t look at Jess again until she’s out of the diner. She spares one last glance at him through the window, the panes of glass feeling thin as cellophane.

****

Later that night, she rereads the writing Jess left on the page of Emma. 

_Sometimes silence means something too._

She wonders what Jess’ silence means, and if she’ll ever understand it, if she’ll ever be able to fill in the gaps. She’d been waiting for him to tell her something, and when he finally did, she had been so angry it didn’t even feel like it mattered. It had taken two hours for Rory to regret being angry with him. It had taken a little more than a week for that regret to be overshadowed by the need to merely _see_ him.

The little messages, the underlined quote, they feel like a view into his mind with a field of vision the size of a pinpoint. She tries to imagine the words in his voice. 

Mostly, she just reads the words over and over and misses him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> oh the YEARNING. things will be less angsty & i know they’ve basically been separate this whole time, but we’ll get to see them interact n be cute soon, i promise!!


	6. 6.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> it is like... actually kinda wild to me how much i'm enjoying writing this fic. i haven't written for pleasure in a really long time, but i really just love them sm... i wanna stay in this lil world for as long as i can. 
> 
> i would be like "honey... u got a big storm coming..." but honestly if anything it's a storm of fluff n cute stuff, cuz i'm getting closer to The Prom chapter. this part might be a little upsetting, but i said i wanted happy! literati, & damn it i am going to get happy! literati!
> 
> as always, hope u like it!

When the day of the prom comes around exactly a week from his meeting with Lane, Jess feels unprepared.

He has the whole “making it up to Rory” bit of his plan ready to be set into motion, but he’d spent so long thinking about it that he completely forgot to plan what to wear. Rory had said a tux, and he’d always planned on changing out of it after the pictures were taken, but now, he kind of wishes he’d been able to pull off actually getting one.

Asking Luke is his only option, and it’s the worst option there is.  


Luke had given him a second chance, and Jess had lied. He'd agreed to go back to school if he could continue working, but really, it was just a ploy to appease Luke, keep making money, and buy himself time. Since their argument, they'd been cordial with one another, but the tension was there. Each of them had been nursing their own private wounds.

At first, Jess didn’t know precisely what he was going to do— seeing his father made everything feel off-kilter, but he had this nagging notion that he and his father weren’t finished yet. He’d tried to suppress everything, shove his own trauma and pain aside and only think about what he was doing for Rory, but in truth, with the appearance of his father came the conflict of a greater decision: chase after Jimmy, or stay locked down in Stars Hollow, carrying the burden of his own aimless future, at least when it came to his education. His options had been swirling around in his head since his father showed up at the diner. In the end, only one seemed right. Not right for Luke, or even for the prospect of his future, but right for Jess at that moment in time. 

Jess needed to follow through with Jimmy, ask him why he’d only shown up now, 18 years after the fact. Ask him what on earth _he_ was supposed to do— there was no way in hell Jess was going to take an entire year of high school over. 

He couldn’t do it, he wouldn’t. Just the thought of it made him feel like he was being sucked into a black hole. So he had to go. If he was going to reject the only option Luke had given him, he had to find another way to live. This, too, became a different hope building inside him, a light at the end of the tunnel— a way out of Stars Hollow, for now.

If that meant going to California, Jess would do it. He’d already looked up the cost of a plane ticket for the day after prom. It cost him almost everything he’d saved up— everything he’d been meaning to use to stay close to Rory, now funneled toward a different path. It stung when he booked the flight, yet, even then, more than anything, he was overwhelmed by the idea that he was going to get answers from his father. He _needed_ answers. 

But first, he had to take Rory to prom.

Jess hadn’t been able to stop thinking about her all week. He didn’t expect her to start coming back to the diner the _morning_ she found the copy of Emma on her door. 

It was like watching a ghost wander in; Jess had been thoroughly spooked by her, embarrassed by himself. He’d hidden upstairs until Luke came up and demanded he go down to help out. Luke hadn’t even asked him about Rory, but Jess knew Luke was slow to catch onto these things. That, or he simply didn’t have the energy to ask just what had happened between them. Jess hoped it was the former.

Jess thought he could handle it, seeing her before he carried out his plans. He didn’t necessarily want to, but he’d convinced himself that maybe it could be like exposure therapy— if they got used to seeing each other casually around town, maybe it wouldn’t feel like the wind was knocked out of him when he was finally face to face with her.

As it turned out, he was wrong, because the same morning Rory made her noteworthy return to the diner, she’d looked his way for a good ten seconds, and Jess genuinely thought he was going to be sick, or worse, storm right out of the diner in a last ditch attempt to get his heart rate under control. Instead, he’d given her a silly half assed smile and she didn’t look his way again, that day, or any other day she went into the diner.

Jess let Leo, the other server, take the Gilmores’ order every time, making sure he had every excuse at his disposal _not_ to interact with Rory. He was embarrassed by his own vulnerability, that was true. But he was also afraid that if he got too close to her, he’d come off the wrong way in an attempt to keep his cards close to his chest. In his wildest bouts of imagination, he would tell her about Jimmy, about his resolve to leave to California, even if he had no idea what he was going to do there, and she would somehow convince him not to leave.

He knows he would ruin everything before it even began, so he stays away, right up until the day of prom. 

When Jess goes downstairs into the diner that morning, Luke is in a particularly good mood, whistling as he takes down the chairs and wipes down the tables.

Jess rubs the sleep from his eyes and grabs a rag, wiping down the counters.

“Hey, Luke,” Jess begins, speaking down to the counter. His voice is husky, rough with anxiety. “Do you have a tux I could borrow?”

Luke’s whistling cuts itself short. The silence is deafening. 

“What do you need a tux for? I thought they wouldn’t let you buy tickets to the prom.”

Jess clenches his jaw and continues to scrub at the countertop, refusing to lift his head. “I just... need one.”

There’s another weighted pause.

“Don’t tell me you’re going to crash the prom. Haven’t you raised my blood pressure levels enough lately?”

Jess’ head snaps up, despite his determination to keep himself in check. “I’m not crashing anything, alright? It’s a one time thing for tonight.”

Luke stares at him, as if he might be able to read his mind. 

“Okay,” Luke says, after a minute of intense gaping. “I’ll see if I have anything that might fit you.”

Jess swallows. He didn’t expect Luke to be so compliant. “Thank you.”

Luke gives him a flattened smile. “Go write the specials on the board and finish opening. The early birds are about to come in, but Caesar and Leo can handle them. I’ll call you up to try em on.”

Jess obeys, carefully setting up the rest of the diner and writing out the specials. Caesar comes in first, clapping Jess on the shoulder as he passes him to go to the kitchen.

Jess tells him that Luke is upstairs, but that he’ll be down soon, and Caesar takes it kindly, assuring Jess that he can pilot the early bird crowd with Leo.

It’s strange to think after tonight, he'll be leaving for God knows how long.

Luke comes crashing through the curtain not ten minutes later, holding two different but seemingly identical black tuxedo jackets in each hand.

Luke holds them up. “These are from my junior and senior proms. I have the matching pants upstairs, but you’re so damn skinny we’ll need to tailor them—“

Jess comes up to Luke, running his hands along the fabric of one of the jackets.

“You kept your high school tuxes?” Jess asks, eyeing the dust on them. “Jeez, I never would’ve pegged you as sentimental. Do you have a class ring too, all kept safe with packing peanuts in a sealed box?”

Luke frowns, snatching the jacket Jess is touching away from him. 

“Do you want my help or not?”

Jess sighs. “Yes.”

Luke smiles, just barely, amused. “Get upstairs and try them on.”

The tuxedos, as Luke predicted, are a bit big on Jess. The one Luke wore for his junior prom is a better fit, but only marginally.

“I was kinda a bulky guy, not to mention taller than you,” Luke says as he makes Jess turn in a circle in front of the mirror. 

Jess feels stupid, swimming in fabric.

“Oh, I’m sure you got all the ladies, Luke.” Jess mumbles sarcastically, which earns him a smack on the back of his head.

Luke crouches down on the floor, toying with the excess fabric around Jess’ backside, cuffing the bottom of the pants.

“Watch your hands,” Jess hisses.

“Shut up,” Luke answers irritably, tugging a little on the slacks before cuffing the pants a second time. Despite Jess’ noises of annoyance, Luke does the same for the other pant leg.  


Luke sighs, standing up and assessing his work in the mirror.

“Normally I would take this to Lorelai, because she’s good with this stuff. She makes all of Rory’s dresses, did you know that?”

Jess stares down at his cuffed pant legs and pointedly does not answer.

“But obviously I can’t take this to her, can I, so it’s up to me.”

Jess’ brow furrows as he turns to look at Luke. “You can sew?”

Luke shrugs. “A little. Comes in handy.”

Jess, admittedly, is as shocked as he is impressed. “You’re like a home ec class and a woodshop class rolled into one person.”

Luke rolls his eyes, but pride radiates off of him. “If you can help Caesar and Leo keep the diner running, I can finish this by the lunch rush.”

Jess stares at Luke, gratitude and relief rushing through his veins. He starts to shrug off the jacket, but Luke stops him. 

“Nope. I need to figure out exactly how to tailor it, so stand here, don’t move, and if I hear so much as a sigh out of your mouth, I’m quitting, and you can just do whatever you were going to do in that god-awful Metallica t-shirt.”

Jess’ face contorts in annoyance. “C’mon—“

Luke puts his hands on Jess’ shoulders and redirects his body toward the mirror. “Stay put. You want to impress Rory, don’t you?”

Rummaging through one of his drawers, Luke pulls out a large wooden box filled with sewing supplies, sifting through it until he finds a small piece of chalk. Returning to Jess, Luke begins to bunch up the fabric towards the back of the jacket, and Jess cranes his neck to give his uncle a look of disbelief and offense. Luke doesn’t look up from where he’s marking lines on Jess’ back with chalk.

"The hell?" Jess murmurs incredulously. 

“What?” Luke mumbles. “Who the hell else would you be trying to look good for? Miss Patty? You’ve been avoiding Rory for weeks, I figured you were fighting or you’re trying to keep something from her. I didn’t think it was going to be prom related. It's prom related, isn't it?” Luke laughs softly, as though amused by his own personal joke.

Ah, so it had been the latter after all.

Jess says nothing, miffed, letting his nonanswer answer for him. He folds his hands in front of himself and lets Luke work.

****

By the time 1 o’clock rolls around, Jess is getting antsy. Luke had taken his measurements and promised he would have everything done by the lunch rush, but the rush was well underway and Luke still hadn’t appeared from upstairs. Jess had spent the last hour practically pirouetting between tables, taking orders and refilling the coffees that Leo couldn’t. Caesar, the one man army that he was, was churning out plates as fast as he could, griping about Luke taking a whole half-day off all the while, but Jess says nothing, gives Caesar no reason to point fingers at him.

He’s grateful for Luke, though he’d never say it. It felt uncomfortable to dwell on how kind Luke was, always, how he had to be the upstanding neighbor, handyman, brother. Jess resented him for it, but this, he didn’t think he would ever say, either. After today, Jess would never have Luke do him any more favors. He'd promised himself that, like a fervent prayer.

Jess sets the coffee pot down at its machine, tapping the service counter to get Caesar’s attention. 

“I’ll be upstairs,” Jess tells Caesar, who gives him the most pained expression Jess almost feels bad. “Relax. I’m going to tell Luke to come down.”

Caesar’s shoulders drop, and he opens his mouth to say something, maybe “thank you,” but Jess is already running up the stairs to the apartment. He tries the doorknob, but it sticks.  


Groaning, Jess raps hard on the door. “Luke!”

“Hold on a minute!”

Jess only knocks harder. “Caesar’s less than a minute from having a mental breakdown, so I’d think carefully about that.”

Jess is mid knock when the door swings open, revealing Luke, red faced and irritated, chalk clutched in his hand and a tape measurer around his neck. Over Luke’s shoulder, Jess sees a sewing machine on the table, black fabric hanging limp beneath the arm of the machine. 

Jess presses his mouth into a thin line, reining in his impatience. “Are you—- is it finished?”

Luke huffs, moving aside to let Jess in. 

“I just finished,” Luke says, sheepishly gesturing to the slacks caught in the sewing machine. “It’s not the best tailoring job there is, in fact, it’s shabby at best—”

“It doesn’t matter,” Jess cuts in, lifting the slacks and letting them fall. He eyes the tuxedo jacket on the back of a chair and fiddles with the sleeve. “I’ll take it. Just get down there and help Caesar and Leo.”

“Hey,” Luke says gruffly. “I did this for you.”

Jess blinks at Luke, every negative emotion he’s ever felt warring inside him, shadowed greatly by guilt. “Thanks.”

Luke exhales, knowing that’s as good as he’s going to get. “You’re welcome.”

Luke turns to go, freezing with his hand on the doorknob. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you about Jimmy. I promise, Jess, he’s no good.”

Jess grips the fabric in his hand. 

_Why can’t you let me decide whether or not he's good?_ he wants to scream, but it’ll just be another blowout, and goddamn it, he wants today to go well. He nods numbly, keeping his expression neutral.  


Luke disappears out the door, and Jess tugs the jacket from the back of the kitchen chair, slipping it on. He pops the collar and evaluates himself in the mirror.

Not too shabby.

****

Lane comes into the diner around 2:45, the time Stars Hollow High classes usually got out on weekdays. Jess ignores her initially, too busy setting down plates and refilling drinks, but he sees her from the corner of his eye as she waits at the counter, chin resting in her hand, the fingers of her free hand drumming on the corner of the counter impatiently.  


“Luke is a real hardass about people who don’t order anything and just sit around,” Jess mutters in Lane’s direction when he has a moment of downtime. “Technically, you’re loitering.”  


Lane shrugs, nonplussed. “He hasn’t come over to say anything to me.”  


Annoyed, Jess looks away. He sighs, jerking his head toward the direction of the storage room. “Come with me for a second.”  


Lane looks scandalized. “I’m a daughter of Christ, I’m not going anywhere with you,” she teases.  


Two seats down from Lane, an older lady side-eyes Jess, whispering something under her breath about hooligans.  


“Jesus, Lane,” Jess grumbles, starting towards the back room.  


As expected, Lane follows a moment later. They stand facing each other among boxes of vegetables and meats. Jess rubs the back of his neck, agitated by Lane's teasing.  


Lane grins, clearly enjoying getting a rise out of Jess for no reason. “I just wanted to tell you, the plan is going great. I got the lights from the hardware store, and Dave and I have the mixtape. We just need the boombox from you, and for you to set up the lights and the streamers. Dave and I will go to the Stars Hollow High prom for half an hour like planned, and then we’ll pick up Rory. I told her I wanted to hang out with her in our dresses and eat junk food before the prom, and she actually agreed! Doesn’t suspect a thing.”

Lane fires through all of this like a whirlwind, reminding Jess distinctly of Rory. Perhaps that's what spending copious amounts of time with the Gilmores did to a person. 

Lane pauses. “Oh, make sure the pizza’s half pepperoni.”  


Jess nods, finding it hard to seem nonchalant about the whole thing. His blood is singing in his veins.  


“So, we’re doing it.”  


Lane’s grin widens. “Yeah, we’re doing it. I think Rory’s gonna love it.”  


Jess allows himself a tiny smile. “I hope so.”  


Lane reaches over and taps him on the arm, a very un-Lane-like gesture, but one that has a semblance to friendliness nevertheless. 

“I think it’s good you did this, Jess. She’ll be so happy when she finds out it was your idea.”  


Jess averts his gaze, heat rising to his cheeks. If only Lane knew that this had turned out to be a Hail Mary, a desperate attempt to do something kind before he left. Something Rory could think of with fondness when he was gone.  


“I’ll be out around 5:30. It’s the earliest Luke is letting me go.”  


Lane acknowledges this without argument and starts to leave, a small skip in her step—- she was so happy to be surprising Rory. It makes Jess grateful that Rory had these types of people in her life, that would work so hard to make her smile. His space wouldn’t be so difficult to fill.  


“Lane?”

Lane turns halfway through the curtain, nearly shrouded by it, but she takes a step toward him, curious.  


Jess swallows, forcing himself to meet her eyes. “Thanks.”  


The corner of Lane’s mouth lifts up. “No problem.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i did say california was in his future! just... in this version, he doesn't just up and leave bc he thinks he's unwanted and he's really upset (& spiraling), he makes a conscious decision. honestly this chapter was hard for me to write, i'm not sure if i conveyed that aspect of it well enough, or whether i went too out of the box with that plot point. 
> 
> sidenote: i listened to "the cut that always bleeds" by conan gray while i wrote this and uh... ouch. listening to conan gray is just guaranteed sad boy hours. i've also been listening to thinkin bout you by frank ocean. suuuper sad boy hours. i know we know this but jess truly is just a sadboy. he isn't a bad boy!!


	7. 7.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> one chapter moreeee until the big prom day... hope u enjoy!!!

The second 5:30 hits, Jess springs into action. He dashes upstairs, snags the boombox, and then runs across the street to Lane’s, where he hefts the boombox through the one of the antique store’s first-floor windows. In turn, Lane passes him a box of string lights and miscellaneous night sky-themed decorations. 

He and Lane hardly speak during their exchange, just nod at one another. Soon enough Jess is back in the diner, ignoring the oogling of the patrons as he marches in only to carry out a small A- frame ladder, shoving it into the back of his car, though it just barely fits. 

Luke throws Jess a confused look when he comes back to retrieve the decorations, but Jess merely passes him to grab his keys, and he’s out the door again.

Jess has never been one for sports, but good _God_ if rigging the lights isn't the greatest test of his own physical fitness he’s ever faced. He didn’t think it would be that difficult to do, but decorating winds up taking him a half hour. 

When he's finally finished with the setup, Jess has an hour and a half left to cook, shower, change, and make it back to the bridge at around 7:30, right before Lane and Dave are supposed to leave the prom for the Gilmore house. 

It’s simultaneously a longer and shorter window of time than Jess needs it to be. He’s already off to a rough start. Plus, when he factors in the time it takes him to do his hair, Jess feels a bit uneasy. He keeps Rory at the forefront of his mind and tries his best.

Astonishingly—or not— the hour goes by in a flash. Jess is on autopilot, doing what he needs to do, refusing to let himself dally. His body becomes a mere vessel to carry him through to the end of the current objective at hand. 

Contrary to what the teachers at Stars Hollow High believed he _could_ put his head down and work if he put his mind to it; he just hated to put his mind to it when it came to homework and essays. 

Rory, however, is a different story.

****

By the time he has the food packed up, Jess has 30 minutes to shower and get ready. Luke usually gave him grief for taking so long in the bathroom, but not today. 

He’s trying to decide whether to leave his hair wild and untamed as it is or plaster it down with hair gel when Luke comes into the apartment. 

Jess all but jumps out of his skin.

“Jesus! Would it hurt to knock?”

Luke frowns, unfazed. “You weren’t even doing anything.”

Jess throws his hand out toward his hair gel, watch, and the tuxedo jacket laid out haphazardly on the table. He's already dressed, save for the jacket and a few buttons on his dress shirt. He'd decided to forego the bowtie on account of it being too nerdy to wear.

“I’m getting ready. I know you probably came out of the womb in a flannel and a baseball cap, but some of us actually put thought into how we look.”

Luke holds up a small, white paper bag by its handles, completely ignoring Jess’ snippy response. “For someone so preoccupied with this prom thing, you’re forgetting one of the most important parts of it.”

Jess glances at the bag with equal parts distrust and confusion. “What?”

Luke produces what looks like a clear plastic takeout container from the bag, misted with condensation. Upon further scrutinization, Jess realizes it isn’t food, but flowers.  


A corsage and a boutonniere.

Jess steps forward, taking it from Luke as if it’s a bar of solid gold. He pops open the cover and feels his throat tighten up.

He recognizes the flowers immediately—- when he was young, Liz had loved making flower arrangements, one of many business ventures that never panned out. Jess could still identify any flower he saw, even in passing on the street.

Both pieces are made from baby’s breath and forget me nots, embellished with transparent blue ribbon. 

Jess raises his head. Luke is staring apprehensively at the flowers, shifting on his feet. He lifts his hat off of his head and puts it back on again, rubbing his forehead.

“I didn’t know what to get. Usually you get something that matches the girl’s dress, but I assume since you’re keeping all of this a secret from her, Rory doesn’t know anything about tonight, and you have no idea what she’s wearing, so, I just, I thought, it would go well with with her eyes, isn’t that what girls like to do, match their clothes with their eyes? This is starting to sound creepy, I just thought… it would be nice.”

Luke is practically out of breath, and there’s sweat beading around his temples. If Jess wasn’t so stupidly touched, he’d be cackling.

“It’s nice,” Jess murmurs. He runs a finger over one of the petals of the forget-me-nots; it’s cool to the touch. He meets eyes with his uncle. “When the hell did you have time to do this?”

“Ah, you know,” Luke says sheepishly, eyes darting around the room, refusing to land on Jess. “I called it into Taylor’s while you were acting like a freakin’ cartoon character running around town. I just picked it up.”

“That whackjob is the florist, too? Christ. And he didn’t give you grief?”

“No, he did, but I just did what you do whenever he talks to you and pretended I couldn’t hear him.”

“Well played.”

The two smile at each other. Jess breaks eye contact when that horrible feeling bubbles in his chest— the one that has a terrifying resemblance to guilt. He stares at the flowers, stares and stares until his eyes unfocus. 

The sensation in his sternum goes from a simmering to a geyser; a heart breaking out of it’s cage. The feelings toward Luke he’d smothered since their fight suddenly rushed through him like wildfire. Above them all was the feeling of being a screw-up. Of being someone that let Luke down, who was unworthy of his kindness.

“Why are you doing this?” Jess demands quietly, voice raw.

Surprise flickers across Luke’s face. “What do you mean?”

“This, the flowers, letting me borrow your old tuxedo and use up the diner food. You could’ve said no, especially after... everything. I wouldn’t have been surprised if you chained me to a chair and fed me gruel for the rest of the year. Why are you doing all this for me?”

Jess’ nails dig into his palm as he speaks, the pain keeping him grounded, focused on something else other than the rattling in his chest when he breathes.

“Because, Jess,” Luke starts, running a hand along his jaw. “You’re doing this for Rory. Rory, one of the best kids in this town. You two...” Luke gulps, restarts. “She makes you smile—— hell, I didn’t even know you could smile like that until Rory came around. She’s good for you, you’re... happy around her. She makes you happy, and she deserves to look back on tonight and be glad that it was you who made it special. You both do.”

Jess blinks, unable to form thoughts, and consequently, words. This is a level of kindness— of care— that Jess cannot bring himself to comprehend. He can’t process it, unless he wants to risk shattering into pieces right before seeing Rory. He shoves his feelings about it to the back of his brain instead.

Luke nods, finished with his piece. When Jess doesn’t give any inkling of a response or reaction, Luke coughs in an effort to break the silence between them.

“Alright, so. I’ll just pretend you decided to be a smartass, like always, so we don’t have to talk about our feelings. I’m... gonna go back downstairs. Have fun, be safe, and remember, nothing Nancy Reagan would kill you for, or I’ll kill you.”

Jess remains silent, gaze fixed on his uncle. Luke shakes his head, realizing Jess isn’t going to speak any time soon. And then Jess is alone, holding flowers in one hand and all the things he won’t say out loud (thank you, I’m sorry, goodbye) in the other, his fist clenched tight.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> big PSA  
> i love luke danes with my whole heart... he's a softie at heart and every time i see him hug jess in last week fights this week tights i start crying true story... @ scott patterson why did u have to cradle milo's head like that when u hugged him i just wanna talk


	8. 8.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this chapter is truly, truly the most self-indulgent of them all. if i had been in the writer's room circa 2003, this is what i would've done. is it realistic? maybe not. but it's real in my heart.
> 
> thank u, enjoy!

If Jess is being honest, his makeshift prom looks pretty damn good.

The lights and silver streamers are dazzling against the backdrop of the night. Lane had thrown in some mini disco globes into the box as well— Jess hung them on the lampposts, too, and they gave the water a nice, light-dappled effect. Walking across the bridge gave one the impression they were walking on a pathway of light. It had come out better than Jess could’ve ever dreamed.

Taylor Doose _wished_ he could pull off any of the town shindigs this well.

Jess is early for once in his life, but even so, he’s restless. It’s 7:45; Lane and Dave would be picking Rory up any minute.

He’d thought that it might look cool to be standing on the bridge when Rory arrived— very byronic hero of him — but now, the idea seemed to fall flat. He can’t stop touching his hair, either—he'd left it ungelled, thinking Rory would like it better that way, even though he knew from previous experience that Rory wouldn’t really care how his hair looked. 

He’s nervous, he realizes, nervous in the same way he had been when he’d helped Rory fix the sprinkler, or when he’d seen her at Sookie’s wedding the day he returned to Stars Hollow. Things had been so awkward between them, but God— he’d just wanted to see her, talk to her, be the one she was looking at.

And that’s all he wants as soon as he sees Dave’s pickup drive up next to his car, Dave and Lane in the front, a shadowy figure between them in the middle of the backseat.

Jess’ heart leaps into his throat.

Dave is the first one to exit the car, followed by Lane, who’s wearing a purple, thin strapped dress that she must’ve fought tooth and nail with her mother to wear. _Good for her_ , Jess thinks; he’s always admired her independent streak.

“Wow, you really did it,” Dave says in wonder. “This is great.”

Jess can’t even voice his thanks; his eyes are on Rory. She’s finally stepped out of the truck.

Her hair falls down her back in loose waves, from what Jess can see. She’s wearing a dress the color of the ocean in the summer, a light blue that was definitely, _definitely_ chosen to match her eyes. It hits her right at the knee, held up by skinny blue straps— come to think of it, Jess doesn’t think he’s ever seen her shoulders so bare before.

There’s a joke in there somewhere about her shoulders being a distraction to his education, but _fuck_ if her mere existence isn’t a distraction to his whole life in that moment.

He suddenly doesn’t feel so stupid for spending time on his hair, for watching a myriad of ridiculous rom-coms, for standing in the middle of a bridge by himself, waiting for Rory Gilmore. 

When Rory makes eye contact with him, her mouth parts a little. For a split second, she looks like she’s going to cry. 

But then her mouth closes, and she smiles at him. It’s a slight smile, one she’s clearly trying to fight, but it’s a smile nonetheless. Jess’ jaw tightens reflexively as he braces himself for what comes next.

Rory is meek as she walks across the bridge, gaze wandering around, taking in the starlight around her.

Rory stops two paces from him, arms folded over her middle protectively. She looks down at her shoes, and then up at him, lingering on his tuxedo jacket.

“You look nice.”

Jess huffs out a laugh. “Likewise,” he mumbles, trying his damnedest not to look at her mouth. “Wasn’t sure you’d come out.”

Rory lifts her shoulders, timid. “My mom’s out on a business trip and I was promised pizza, so I couldn’t really turn the offer.”

“Oh,” Jess says softly. “So Lane didn’t tell you—“

“Nope,” Rory answers swiftly. “But I had a feeling it had to do with you. I just didn’t expect... all this.” She gestures to the lights, laughing feebly. “Jess, this is amazing.”

“I said I would go,” Jess tells her, struggling to speak above a whisper.

Rory’s eyes light up with realization, or maybe it’s the lighting. “You’re a man of your word, I know.”

Jess nods at her, and at once Rory’s arms are around his neck, the sweet smell of her shampoo tickling his nose. 

“Thank you,” she whispers. His body thrums when her lips brush his ear.

“No big deal,” he manages, the tips of his ears burning red. 

He’s enormously, ridiculously smitten with this girl.

Behind them, a bass line begins to trickle through the speakers of Jess’ boombox. Lane looks crazed, grinning at them as she sets the boombox on the roof of the truck. She leaps down from the truck’s running board with a huff of triumph. Dave smiles at her fondly, shaking his head.

“If you two are done kissing and making up, can we dance now?” Lane shouts over the music. “I’ve been waiting all week for this!”

Turning around, Rory bursts out in laughter. “I love this song!”

Lane is positively ecstatic. “I know!” 

Lane rushes at Rory, and they hug one another tightly, stumbling and giggling. Jess just barely avoids being pitched into the lake a second time, yelling at them to watch it, but he can’t help the smile that forms on his face.

Rory and Lane begin to jump around, whipping their heads back and forth, completely absorbed in their own fun. Jess silently retreats to where Dave is leaning against the grille of the truck.

“They’re crazy together,” Dave mumbles, but his expression is warm. 

Jess stands beside him, letting the music roll through his body as if he’s standing in a dark concert venue, feeling the vibrations pulse through his veins. 

“You gonna dance?” Jess asks, trying to seem cool, collected.

Dave side eyes him. “Are you?”

“Not my thing.”

“Same here. I’m better at playing music than dancing to it.”

“That’s more than I can say.”

An awkward pause ensues. Jess drums his fingers against his thigh, pushing off of the truck irritably. He can’t stand this quiet.

“You want a soda?”

“Water’s fine.”

Jess goes to the back seat of his car, grabbing a Coke and a water bottle from a small cooler-- he'd skipped out on bringing alcohol, but a part of him wishes he hadn't. Trying not to wallow in his alcohol-less regret, he passes the water to Dave.

“I’m sorry about the whole knocking into you thing at the party. It wasn’t on purpose or anything, but if I were you, I wouldn’t want anything to do with me.” Jess says after a moment. “It was cool of you to go along with this.”

Dave stares down at his drink. “It’s okay,” he replies kindly. “This turned out to be way better than the high school’s prom. And for what it’s worth, I think you and I both came out on top.”

Dave smiles slyly at him. Jess chuckles, and the two of them look out at Rory and Lane. Jess has a feeling they’re thinking similar things.

Amends made, they drink in silence.

That is, they try to, until about ten seconds later, when the Distillers start to roar through the speakers.

Jess is instantly transported to a night of flashing lights, sweaty bodies, and Rory’s arm around his waist, eyes sparkling as she was swept away by the music, enraptured by it. When he thinks back on that night, he can hardly remember seeing anything else but her face, shining as though a candle was lit beneath her skin, illuminating her from the inside out.

As he watches her now, looking like a marionette whose strings are being pulled by a chaotic puppeteer, a longing rises in his chest, swells like the tide.

“Jess!” Rory calls out to him. She’s fucking glowing. “You like this one!”

Jess takes a sip of his soda in order to hide his smile. He tips his head in acknowledgment, hoping she’ll leave it at that.

But Rory’s not satisfied with a simple nod.

She starts coming toward him from the end of the bridge, determined. 

Dave mutters, “I think you’re going to have to dance.”

“What?” Jess asks, keeping his eyes on Rory.

Dave shoots him a smug smile. “Lane said she put this on the mixtape just for you.”

“ _What_ —“ Jess starts, but then Rory’s in front of him, her hair disheveled, skin glistening.

He doesn’t even remember what he was going to say.

“Come on, Mr. Too Cool,” Rory says, pouting a bit. “Dance, please? You did at the concert.”

Dave splutters, hacking as water goes down the wrong pipe. Red-faced, he puts his back to Jess.

Jess suppresses a sigh. Rory must have told Lane about the concert, who, clearly, also told Dave.

He goes on the defensive instinctively; it's a losing battle, and he knows it. “It was one song. And I didn’t _dance_. I jumped, that’s what everybody does at concerts, they jump with the music, like idiots.”

Rory grins devilishly. “Okay,” she says, drawing out the word. “Jump like an idiot with me, then. There’s no one here but us.”

“Rory—“

“Please?” Rory peers up at him beseechingly with eyes like liquid fire.

He doesn’t think he will ever get used to looking her in the eye. The way she disarms him so effortlessly.

“Okay,” he relents softly. “Alright, alright.”

Rory kisses him so hard he’s almost embarrassed to have Dave standing right next to them. He focuses on Rory instead, tries to bring himself to a place in his mind where the thought of making a fool of himself doesn’t mortify him. 

Rory laces her hand in his, tugging him gently.

He turns to Dave in a moment of desperation. “C’mon. Don’t let me go through this alone.”

Dave presses his mouth into a thin line, trying to quash the laughter in his throat. “Alright, I won’t.”

And like that, Dave sprints toward Lane, the wood groaning beneath his feet, his water bottle standing where he was a few seconds ago. In no time at all, Lane’s got him headbanging along with her.

“I thought that guy had the personality of a sack of bricks when I first met him,” Jess mutters, rolling his eyes.

“He’s in a band,” Rory points out. “And he’s dating Lane. She’s kinda out there.”

“Fair point.”

Jess acquiesces, allowing Rory to drag him down the length of the bridge as a Rilo Kiley song comes on.

Classic Lane.

****

Once he starts, Jess finds it hard to stop jumping and singing along. 

He’d said he’d trusted Lane to compile the songs, not expecting much, but he’s shocked by just how many of the songs he knows by heart, how many of them he can sing without thinking. Rory has her hand in his, then her arms are around his shoulders, fingers brushing the back of his neck as they jump to the music in unison. Jess stops thinking altogether, pulling her closer by the waist and letting his body move on its own.

Time goes by without moving, and he’s laughing, and kissing Rory, and beaming at Lane and Dave as they all scream the lyrics at the same time. He doesn’t care that he probably looks possessed, that his voice is horrible, that if he could see himself, he’d be cringing. Jess doesn’t care about anything—for once, he genuinely doesn’t give a shit, and it feels good.

****

Later, they set up the food like a picnic in the center of the bridge, all of them drenched in sweat, talking about music and how Taylor Doose would have a conniption if he saw them out there, blasting music and dancing after 9 p.m. like heathens. Lane has her head in Dave’s lap, and Dave seems absolutely thrilled about it, though he’s making a valiant effort to conceal his emotions. Jess wants to laugh— Mrs. Kim would be furious at them— but to be fair, Rory has her head on his shoulder and Jess is convinced she can hear his heart pounding as if he’s a sinner in church, so he doesn’t really have the right to make fun of them. 

They’re playing with each other’s hands while they listen to Lane go on a rant about The Velvet Underground. For fun, Jess taps out the beat of a song from the band against the back of Rory’s hand, just to see if she’ll guess it correctly— it was a game they played sometimes.

Rory grins, mouthing the correct song title at him. In response, Jess raises his eyebrows at her, impressed.

Rory untangles her hand from his, reaching inside Jess’ tuxedo jacket, which he’d draped around her shoulders as the night air settled. Bewilderment crosses her face as she roots around beneath the jacket.

She pulls her hand out from under the jacket and produces a paperback copy of a Maya Angelou anthology. Jess forgot that he’d put it in the inside pocket at the last minute, more out of habit than anything else. Rory pretends to study the cover like a scholar, nodding approvingly. Jess rolls his eyes, unamused.

“Guys? Are you even listening? I swear, you two skipped your honeymoon phase and went straight to celebrating your 50th wedding anniversary.” Lane mumbles sarcastically.

“Not that I hate the honeymoon phase,” she adds, glancing at up at Dave with an expression so lovestruck Jess wants to gag.

“Stop it,” Rory kicks her foot out at Lane playfully. 

“What?” Lane exclaims, affronted. “You should’ve seen Jess. He was so excited about everything, it might as well have been an anniversary.”

“I wasn’t excited,” Jess argues, glaring at Lane. “I had to make sure you knew how the hell everything was supposed to go down.”

“You were excited,” Lane shoots back. “Admit it.”

“I’m gonna turn the music up,” Jess grumbles, exiting the conversation physically and mentally by getting to his feet, cranking up the volume on the boombox. He can feel Rory’s eyes on him all the while, intense and questioning.

Jess pulls Rory to a stand, and they kiss until Lane and Dave shove them a little, teasing. Soon they’re all laughing again, slightly delirious, the awkwardness dispelled.

Everything is surreal. Jess is weightless, Rory’s next to him, and there’s a kind of electricity coursing beneath his skin, a sort of being buzzed without a drop of alcohol in his system. It’s almost uncomfortable, foreign to him. 

Then it dawns on him.

He’s _happy_. He’s happy like he’s never been before. 

Like he’s never afforded himself the freedom to feel this much at once, until now.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> if only miss. asp had given us literati & lane and dave double-dating at the prom. the absolute serve it would have been... an episode for the books. it's been a good ten years since i watched gg for the first time, but god i get more and more bitter with every rewatch. in the words of the great and all knowing adele, we could have had it all. rolling in the deep. asp u had our hearts inside of your hands... and you played them... to the beat.
> 
> (would jess canonically read maya angelou? the world may never know, but if u would like, pls give ur thoughts on this— i am a big fan of the idea that he would)
> 
> i really hope you liked this chapter!!


	9. 9.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> part 2 of being self-indulgent about literati at prom... but a little less party, a bit more truth (without the dare)
> 
> ** I borrowed some dialogue from S3– it isn’t that distinct (to me anyways), but I just wanted to make note of it!
> 
> thank u for reading!! enjoy!!

“Lane did pretty good,” Jess comments. “With the mixtape. And kidnapping you.”

Beside him, Rory scoffs. “She didn’t kidnap me. I willingly agreed to go with her, I even left my mom a message that I’d be with Lane. That’s hardly an abduction.”

“I guess.”

“Well, you’re glad I came, aren’t you?”

Jess closes his eyes briefly. “Yeah. I am.”

“You were excited about it,” Rory says smugly, calling back to Lane’s comment before.

Jess scoffs, squinting one eye at the sky, the other shut tight. The stars are so bright in the distance, and there are so many of them, blurred around the edges. He’d never really seen the stars in New York— it had taken being in Stars Hollow for him to genuinely notice them. When did he get used to seeing them every night?

“Lane has no idea what she’s talking about.”

Rory simply laughs.

They’ve been lying on the hood of Jess’ car ever since Lane and Dave had taken their leave and gone home half an hour ago. It’s only 11, giving them another hour to themselves. Even with no one to hold her accountable, Rory refused to break her mother’s curfew.

The mixtape plays softly in the background, the same songs recycled, but neither Jess nor Rory mind. They had hardly spoken directly to each other all night, yet, now that they were by themselves, just to be next to each other seemed enough.

“This was incredible,” Rory says shyly after a drawn out silence. She doesn’t turn to face Jess as she speaks. “Probably better than whatever Stars Hollow High had planned.”

Jess swallows. “It was nothing, seriously, just lights and party decorations.”

Rory’s face screws up in annoyance. “Your Starry Night blew Stars Hollow’s Starry Night out of the water, I just know it,” she declares indignantly.

Jess sighs, knowing that Rory will be steadfast in her opinion of tonight, regardless of what he says. “I’m glad you liked it.”

Rory squeezes Jess’ hand, and Jess turns to her unconsciously. She faces him, then, too. Their noses touch, and Jess nuzzles his nose against hers in that familiar way of his, making Rory blush. They breathe in tandem, gentle and slow. Rory’s eyes drop to his mouth, and Jess can’t help it. He leans in.

Rory meets him halfway, and then he’s swallowed up in her, like an ocean wave crashing over his body, pinning him beneath the surface. It’s different from the kisses they shared earlier, more. _More_. He can’t feel anything but Rory, the way her hands slide over his neck, his hair. He wonders if this is what it is to be consumed by something, enveloped in a moment in time.

When they break away, Jess is quiet. He leans his forehead against Rory’s and closes his eyes, tries to imagine they’re telepathic, that they share an unspoken pathway of communication.

_Work_ , he pleads. _Please, work._

But nothing happens, because they aren’t telepathic, and never will be.

Rory asks, “What’s it mean? The note you left in margin of the book?”

Jess lets a few beats of his heart pass through the stillness. He had known that he was not leaving that night without this conversation. He had left the notes in Emma for a reason. One had been for the prom; he had kept his promise to go with her. The other note, the one he'd held between his teeth for weeks, had been for the secret of his father.

Jess kisses Rory again, this time with less fervor, more tenderness.

When he looks into her eyes, he sees the trepidation he’d been feeling for days reflected in the blue of her irises. He runs a hand up her arm, feels the cool night air on her skin.  


Rory’s brow furrows, waiting. Jess inhales through his nose. After weeks of chomping down on this particular secret, he talks.

“I saw my father a couple weeks back. He came into the diner one night while I was closing, a real weirdo. He lives in California. I didn’t want to tell you because it’s been driving me kinda crazy, and I wanted to make things... right between us first.”

“Oh.” 

Jess swallows hard. He brings his hand up to Rory’s face, and Rory shuts her eyes, reveling in his touch. Jess is acutely reminded of the night of Kyle’s party; when Rory touched him it was as if he had never been touched in his entire life.

“I—“

Rory opens her eyes. They stare at one another, both searching each other for signals.

Finally, Rory says, “You’re leaving.”

_Don’t be angry._

Jess clears his throat, swallows his pride. “I wanted to tell you before I left— I’m heading out tomorrow.” Jess strokes Rory’s cheek with his thumb. “Look, I know— I know I don’t tell you everything. I’m just... you don’t need my crap. You’ve got school and your mom and Lane and Yale—“

“Don’t you trust me?” Rory’s mouth is turned down at the corners; she’s hurt. “Jess, I care about you. I want you to be happy.”

Jess sighs. His chest aches so deeply he’s afraid he might cry. Jess Mariano does _not_ cry-- he didn't cry when one of Liz's piece of shit boyfriends tore up his only copy of The Old Man and the Sea, his most prized possession, and he wouldn't cry now.

Rory hums imploringly when Jess says nothing, gaze steady and clear. It's like she's trying to find bits of truth in his eyes.

“I’m a little nervous to leave,” Jess admits, glancing down. _Leave you_ , he means, “But I can’t stay here anymore. I can’t go back to school.”

Rory flinches. Jess knows how much she wanted him to finish school. It isn’t what she chooses to focus on, though.

“Have you told Luke?”

Oh, Luke.

Jess further avoids her scrutiny, stares at something beyond her in the distance. “I wrote... a letter. I’m going to leave it on the dresser before I go.”

Jess had decided that if anything, a letter was what was he owed Luke; he couldn’t leave saying absolutely nothing to his uncle. He’d drafted the letter several times over, but it never came out the way he wanted it to. There was so much he had to say to Luke, and so much he wouldn’t dare say, even in a letter Luke would read when he was flying across the country. He’d settled with the bare bones of the message: he was going to California, he was going to find Jimmy, and Luke didn’t need to worry about him anymore.

Rory nods, like she’s trying to come to terms with his words. Her voice trembles when she speaks again. “Will you come back?”

Jess almost lies on impulse, but he wrangles the compulsion in and tells the truth. “I don’t know.”

He expects her to say, _so that’s it, I guess_ , fueled by contempt. The goodbye, the nail in the coffin.

Instead, Rory murmurs, “You’ll call me when you get there?” 

Caught off guard, Jess looks her in the eye once more. No nail, not yet. “Yeah. Yeah, I’ll call you.”

“Promise?”

Jess inhales sharply, shame running through him like a stake to the chest. He can see it in Rory’s eyes; she wouldn’t be able to stand it if he left her high and dry, again. He’d done it one too many times.

“I promise.”

He means it.

Rory nods thoughtfully, satisfied. “Okay. Send me your address, too, when you figure it out. I want to be able to send you books and stuff.”

Jess almost laughs. He sits up. 

“Rory,” he chokes out, peering back at her over his shoulder, “Shouldn’t you be more upset about this?”

Rory lifts herself up onto her elbows. “You’re not leaving because of me, are you? This is really about you and your dad?”

Jess stares at her, dumbfounded. “Yeah.”

Rory’s features are void of emotion. “Okay. Then you should go.”

Jess is confused. “You don’t... aren’t you supposed to hate me or something?”

“Not for something like this.” 

Rory doesn’t elaborate. She hops down from the hood of the car, and just like that, the conversation Jess had dreaded is officially over and done with. 

Jess, grateful as he is for Rory’s understanding, had expected more anger, more of how she’d reacted to him on the bridge.

But perhaps that was wrong of him— Rory could be cruel, but more often than not, she was kind. He sometimes forgot that Rory wanted what was best for him, just as he wanted what was best for her.

Right now, going to California is what’s best for him. Rory must know that, Jess thinks, otherwise perhaps she wouldn’t be so easygoing.

Rory’s barefoot, but it still takes her a minute to get her bearings. She extends her hand to Jess, keeping level with his gaze.

“Will you dance with me?”

As if on cue, Put Your Head on My Shoulder by Paul Anka crackles through the speakers. Jess smirks, narrowing his eyes.

“Thought you said you were too tired to keep going.”

“You know me, once I start, you can’t stop these dancing feet,” Rory says jokingly.

The song had come on earlier in the night, right before they’d decided to rest and eat— Lane had insisted on putting one slow song on the mixtape. Jess hadn’t been too keen on the idea of slow dancing. As it happened in the end, it was Rory who refused to dance with him, claiming she was too exhausted. 

Jess wouldn’t press her about it, so he and Rory sat down on the edge of the bridge while Dave and Lane moved in slow circles, blissful and quiet. They’d looked every part the picture perfect high school couple as the lights and streamers twinkled above them.

Jess hadn’t been jealous, per se, but he had been a smidge disappointed that he didn’t get the chance to decide whether he wanted to dance with Rory or not. The slow dance was something he’d found painfully cliche when he saw it on screen, but yeah, maybe he’d wanted to hold Rory close like that, his hands on her waist, her head resting on his shoulder as the music played.

Maybe he’d wanted that with Rory ever since the dance marathon.

Jess schools his features into a blank expression. “Whatever you say.”

Jess slips off the hood of his car, bending down to unlace his boots, and chucks them off.

Rory bites her lip as Jess places his hand in hers. She leads him toward the middle of the bridge, Jess following where she goes. When they come to a stop, Jess’ hands go to Rory’s waist as hers gingerly hold onto his shoulders. 

Rory takes a steadying breath. “I’m not the best at slow dancing. The four step kind, I mean, I can, I know how, I’m just not good—”

Jess’ eyes flick to hers. “I was planning on staying pretty stationary. I’ve been running around all day like a chicken with it’s head cut off. My feet are killing me.”

“Oh,” Rory mumbles, flushing. “Good.”

“Harsh, Gilmore. Didn’t know you enjoyed my pain so much.” 

Rory smacks his shoulder lightly as they begin to sway. 

“This is much better than actually dancing.”

“Huh.”

“What?”

“I just wasn’t aware that what you were doing earlier was considered dancing.”

“Hey!” Rory glowers at him, but Jess laughs, unaffected.

As they move, a strand of Rory’s hair comes loose from behind her ear. Jess reaches for it at the same time as Rory, brushing her hand with his as she beats him to the mark and fixes her hair.

Jess freezes, becoming aware of himself.

It was so automatic for him to tuck Rory’s hair behind her ears whenever strands came loose as they kissed, or to tug her hair tie out from its hold on her ponytail if she asked him to, so that she wouldn’t get a headache while she hunched over her homework. The gestures never felt intimate, merely necessary. Only then, with their bodies hardly touching, does it feel it too close for comfort, a little something more than just an act of necessity.

Rory catches Jess’ hand before he can pull away. Jess’ breath stutters, stops as Rory turns her face into his hand.

Rory presses her lips against his palm, glancing up at him with those huge doe eyes of hers. Jess clenches his jaw, trying to exercise some kind of self discipline, but by the time Rory drops his hand, Jess is already tilting his head closer to hers. They press their foreheads together, their lips so close yet so far.

“Rory,” Jess whispers, closing his eyes.

Rory, as in, _thank you for giving me a chance_.

Rory, as in, _I wish I had told you everything sooner_.

Rory, as in, _I’m in love with you, and I have no idea what to do with that._

Rory doesn’t say a word. She leans in those last crucial centimeters and crushes her lips to his.

_If I loved you less, I might be able to talk about it more._

Everything important they needed to say was embedded in the silences, the moments they didn’t speak. It wasn’t telepathy, as Jess wished it was. It was simply a knowing— that they cared for one another, that whatever it was that they felt was larger than anything they could express. It ran deeper than thought, deeper than language.

Years down the road, Jess would wonder what he would've been like if he was never shipped off to Stars Hollow, if he never met Rory. Whether he would have been like his mother, with her hard learned lessons in love involving people that didn’t care about her; if he would try to make relationships work, just like Liz, and call it love and believe it.

But that night, as he and Rory swayed to the timeless, sweet crooning of Paul Anka, Rory’s cheek against his shoulder, Jess knew that he had been given a taste of real love, and he would never find it in anyone else again. He would never be able to recall that night and do the details justice— what transpired there, what was said, what he’d felt.

When it came to Rory, words failed.

****  
Jess drops Rory off at her house for the last time just as the clock strikes midnight.

They stand on the Gilmores’ porch for what feels like eternity, holding one another, neither of them willing to be the first to let go. 

Jess keeps saying, don’t go yet, let’s drive around, don’t go, like it makes a difference. As if he isn’t the one that’s going to hop on a plane the next morning. He won’t change his mind about that. He will always have to leave, no matter how much time he buys himself— time, like everything else, ran out eventually.

Rory’s about to turn and enter the house when Jess remembers the corsage and boutonnière.

He'd been so wrapped up in Rory that Luke's little prom gift had completely slipped his mind.

“Shit,” he hisses, stepping out of Rory's arms. 

Rory frowns at him, confused and alarmed. “What?”

Jess rushes down the stairs of the porch, throwing open the passenger side door of his car and groping blindly beneath the seats.

He yanks the little container from underneath the passenger seat, thankful that the flowers are still in good condition. He hops back up the steps, holding the container out to Rory. 

She squints at it initially, but within seconds her eyes widen, her mouth forming a surprised circle. Jess pops the top open, his hands trembling slightly as he lifts the corsage from its casing.

Jess focuses on the soft blue of the forget me nots, bashful. “Luke got these. I don’t know what hand——”

“Here, um. I don’t think it matters.”

Rory holds out her wrist, and Jess gingerly puts the corsage on for her, his fingers tingling as he grazes the small bone of her wrist. Rory laughs when he pulls away, awed and amused by his shyness. Jess, in turn, tries to play it cool, but he fumbles with the boutonnière, out of his depth about what he’s meant to do with it. 

Rory steps forward, taking it from Jess’ hands. He holds his breath as she pins the boutonnière onto the lapel of his jacket.

“There,” Rory says softly, taking a step back with her eyes fixed on the flowers. “Blue’s your color, Bond.”

“Ah, you pull it off better than me,” Jess insists, squeezing her hand. “Although maybe being surrounded by the ocean all the time will make me appreciate the color more.”

He doesn’t say that he’s always loved blue, that he’d only loved it more since she came into his life.

A sad smile touches Rory’s lips, but it disappears quickly. “You’d better not become obsessed with hemp products, or start saying ‘dude’ all the time.”

“I’m offended you would even think I’m capable of doing of either of those things.”

Rory laughs, kisses him a final time. She doesn’t linger on his lips like she usually does.

“Okay, beat it.” Rory grips his shoulder and pivots him toward the stairs. “You’ve got places to be, people to hunt down, surfers to make fun of.”

“I said I’m going to call you,” Jess reminds her as he’s hurried down the stairs.

“I know.”

“Maybe write a letter or two.”

“Sure, buddy.”

“Send out a couple messages in bottles. If you find one that says ‘help’ in big letters, you’ll know it was me.”

“Shush.”

Jess stands at the midway point between his car and the porch, his hands shoved in his pockets. Rory remains on the steps, her figure washed out by the lights on the porch, like an angel descended. 

Jess is relieved he can’t see her clearly. He isn’t sure what he would do if he could.

“Goodnight, Rory.”

In the dark, Rory sniffles, crossing her arms. Jess breathes in. He holds the air in his lungs the way he holds smoke, doesn’t breathe out until she answers him.

“Night, Jess.”

Jess spends the drive back to the diner with his hand pressed against the boutonnière, as if it will somehow absorb the sharp pain shooting through his chest. 

It doesn’t.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> reading this fic back I’m like “what’s with me and the ocean... also i have a thing for forehead touches” lmao
> 
> i've decided we're almost to the end, folks. the prom was my mission as much as it was jess' in this fic, and now that it's done, it's time for things to come to a close. let’s do it— a little more to go.
> 
> also "i care for you still & i will forever/that was my part of the deal, honest/we got so familiar" from white ferrari by frank ocean was the soundtrack to this chapter... cry with me honestly im a mess i hated/loved writing this part.


	10. 10.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so for Jess' California arc I decided I was gonna keep most of the canon elements of "Here Comes the Son" & just add stuff in. Jess still finds Jimmy alongside Sasha at the boardwalk, has the whole "I have nothing!" speech, goes to the bookstore, all of that!

One thing Jess doesn’t expect when he lands in California is Sasha.

It’s clear that she’s a firecracker woman, up in everyone’s business, and doesn’t take any shit, but she’s sweet. She’s like an inverted version of Lorelai, though Jess loathed to think of it that way.

It seemed true— both were headstrong, wacky, take charge. But where Lorelai was childish, Sasha seemed wise beyond her years. The second Jess sees Jimmy and Sasha together, he knows that Sasha must have straightened Jimmy out somehow. His father, too, isn’t what Jess expects.

Jimmy’s... definitely weird, that impression was correct, but he’s also much more conscious of his faults than Jess expected. Jimmy knew he was a mess, knew that he’d fucked up, that fathers should raise their kids. It was more than Jess could say Liz knew about having a child.

Jess isn’t ecstatic about asking Jimmy for a place to crash. But he had nowhere else to go— he’d bought a one-way ticket. With some hassling, Jimmy agreed to talk it over with Sasha, and apparently, she gave in, because before he knows it, Jess is sitting at their kitchen table, eating pizza.

After dinner, which includes so much silence and pitiful attempts at conversation that at one point Jess wishes a fissure would open up and swallow him whole, as well as a moment where Lily—Sasha’s bookworm kid— crawls out from underneath the table, book in hand, Jess gets Jimmy to talk, really talk.

They step out into the backyard, which is just as eclectic and offensive to the eye as the inside of the house. Jess eyes the beer Jimmy’s holding, and without asking, Jimmy goes back inside and returns with a second beer.

Jess doesn’t question it, doesn’t remind Jimmy he might be old enough to be drafted, but he isn’t old enough to drink. Jess assumes Jimmy knows that; he also must’ve sensed that Jess needed a beer to actually get through any more conversation with him. He would be right about that.

They sit in plastic chairs and sip their beer. It’s been a while since Jess has had any alcohol, and the warmth feels nice, like an old acquaintance he's fond of. Everything now feels like “since Rory.” Since Rory he hasn’t drank, hasn’t really smoked, hasn’t found himself completely writing off change as a possibility in his life. Things could change, were always changing. Him being there, in California, is proof of that. 

“So... you got a girl or anything?”

Startled, Jess lowers the bottle from his lips and looks at Jimmy. Jimmy’s staring straight ahead, but his leg is jiggling up and down, rattling his chair. 

Perhaps Jimmy was more chicken about things than Jess thought— more afraid of Jess than Jess was of him.

“Yeah,” Jess answers after a beat.

“Oh, yeah?” Jimmy takes a swig of his beer, eyebrows raised. “She good, you get along? Or is it a backseat of the car kinda thing, God knows I had a lot of those situations when I was your age—“

“What the fuck is your problem?” Jess snaps. The way Jimmy’s talking is making his stomach roil, and he’s not about to rule out throwing a punch at his father if he says the wrong thing.

Jimmy throws his hands up. “Sorry, sorry. It’s serious, then?”

Jess scoffs, shaking his head. “Thought you said you weren’t gonna play Daddy. I’m not here to talk about me, I’m here to talk about you.”

“I told you—“

“I know what you said,” Jess interjects, pronouncing each word firmly. “But why’d you go after me now? How the hell did you know where to find me?”

“I don’t know— I just wanted to see you, swear it was that innocent. Luke’s been in that diner for forever, and I heard you were crashing with him, living there, so... I went.”

“Okay,” Jess says in a low voice, “But who told you I was there? I was born and raised in New York, stayed there for the first 17 years of my life since you saw me. That’s the first place I would go, if I were you.”

There’s a pause in the conversation. Jimmy stares down blankly at the grass beneath his feet. Realization creeps up on Jess, although when it hits him, he knows the answer had been sitting in the back of his mind the entire time.

“Liz,” Jess murmurs. “You went to Liz, and she told you.”

“Look, man. Don’t be angry with her, okay? I practically begged her, I had to promise her I wasn’t gonna do a thing to ya—“

“You do not get to tell me not to be angry with her,” Jess tries to contain the fury building in his voice. “Fuck that.”

Jimmy is quiet for once. Jess uses the blessed time to breathe, reign in the cold, icy anger that’s freezing over his veins. 

After all this time, Liz really cared so little about Jess’ opinions, his emotions. She probably hadn’t even thought about whether Jess would want a heads up about his father— the father who left Jess with an eccentric, alcohol dependent mother, the father who never bothered to check in sooner, when men were coming in and out of the house like stray dogs. She probably believed if she was happy to see Jimmy, maybe Jess would be, too. She and Luke had both thought they were doing what was best for Jess, but it always came back to what Liz wanted. Always.

“You have a nice family,” Jess mumbles, trying to ease the tension. He takes another sip of his beer to help him relax. “Who would’ve thought that out of my parents you would end up being the more reliable one.”

Jimmy sighs, rubbing his forehead with the back of his hand. “It’s all Sasha. She’s Miss Reliable around here, knows everybody and their mother out on the Pier, always offering to bake cookies or help somebody pick fruits from their garden. She’s really... amazing.”

Jess is reminded of Rory— Rory, who was helping Paris study the night he came over to give her food, who nearly tossed him down the stairs just to get him to help out Luke in the diner, who physically helped Lane transport her drums to Kyle’s house the night of that cursed party, and then wouldn’t leave because she was there for Lane, and she needed to be there for her best friend.

“Can I use your phone?”

Jimmy gives him a curious look. “There’s one right inside. It's wireless, phone comes off and everything, and the connection is best on the front porch. Don’t know why, but it is.”

Silent, Jess gets up and walks back inside the house.

Phone procured, he nearly collides with Lily as he approaches the front door. She’s climbed out of a circle of hell, Jess thinks bitterly, just to read and scare the shit out of him, popping out of closets and sliding out from beneath tables.

In truth, she reminds Jess of himself when he was younger, but he forces himself not to dwell on it too hard.

“You’ve got a lot of books in your bag,” is the first thing she ever says to him that's longer than a one word response.

“You’ve been going through my stuff?”

Lily shrugs. “No. Just looking for books.”

Jess clenches his jaw. She was so strangely like him, it was kind of embarrassing to see himself reflected. “Well, kid, I don’t think your mom would want you reading any of my books, so stay out of my stuff.”

Lily narrows her eyes at Jess, and as quickly as she’d appeared, she disappears. She’s like a goddamn ghost.

But, as far as Jess can tell, she’s a friendly one, like Casper.

Rory picks up on the first ring, like she's been waiting by the phone for Jess to call.

“Hello?”

“Hi.”

“You called.” Rory is unmistakably happy. Jess’ grip tightens on the phone.

“I did,” Jess answers. He pauses, checking his watch. “What time is it there?”

“Um... around 1:30.”

“Jesus. I can go, if you want.”

“No,” Rory says swiftly. “No, I’m just studying. Where are you? Did you... are you with him?”

“Yeah,” Jess pats his pocket. He’d forgotten his fucking lighter in his car. He downs the rest of his beer instead. “I’m with Jimmy. I’ll be staying with him.”

“Oh.” Rory yawns; Jess presses his lips together so he doesn’t smile. “The address?”

“Once I know it for sure, yeah. The streets here aren’t as simple as fruit by the foot, you know. No orange, no cherry.”

“Ah, see, now having stupid street names comes in handy.”

Though he tries not to, Jess grins, toeing the ground with his shoe. “I’m just glad Jimmy’s letting me stay. I won’t end up a beach bum.”

“You and all that sand?” Rory chuckles mockingly. “You’d die.”

“I resent that, coming from you. You know you’d hate it too, we’d be a couple of wusses on the beach.”

Jess can practically hear her smile. How was it that only the day before she’d been in his arms, dancing with him? Everything felt so... far away.

“So everything’s good?” Rory asks. 

Jess’ pulse is racing.

“Yeah,” Jess says quietly. “Everything’s good.”

Less than 24 hours in, and he already misses her. This isn’t how it’s supposed to go.

Jess clears his throat. “Go ahead, study. I’ll call you later.”

Jess counts the beats of his heart; one, two, three, four, five, six. Rory is unresponsive for a good ten beats.

“Stay safe, okay?”

He knows what it sounds like before Rory’s about to cry, and this is it. Jess swallows hard, trying to dislodge the lump in his throat.

“Okay. Bye.”

“Bye.”

The line goes dead.

Jess presses his palms against his eyes and attempts to strangle his emotions into place. He had way too many of them at once, and they contrasted with one another when it came to different people— Rory, Liz, Jimmy, Luke. He doesn’t know how he’s meant to come to terms with the things that are beginning to fall into place. He's estranged from people he never thought he'd be estranged from, becoming closer to people he never thought he'd be close to.

But for the first time, he's making his own life happen, instead of life happening to him. 

“Hey, Jess?”

Jess drops his hands from his face and turns toward the front door, where Sasha’s leaning against the doorframe.

“You alright, sweetheart?”

“I’m fine,” Jess spits out. He can’t imagine the state of himself, the haggard eyes, the furrowed brow, the scowl. Sasha merely smiles.

“I’ve seen fine, and you ain’t it. But we don’t have to talk about that now— I’ve got a mattress all set up for you in the living room.”

“Thanks.” 

Jess doesn’t have anything against Sasha, in fact, he actually kind of likes her, but in that moment, he wants her to leave him alone. He makes a move to leave.

But Sasha, like Lorelai, isn’t one to take a hint. “Jimmy told me you’re gonna need a job if you’re gonna stay here.”

Jess stares at her, her bandana glinting bright as the moon in the dark. "I didn't know you were going to let me stay that long." 

"Well, you've got nowhere else to be, do you?"

Jess grits his teeth. Sasha's right. He had no car, no connections to anyone else in the state. Just Jimmy.

“I know some people at the bookstore Jimmy found you in on the boardwalk. You sure do read a lot. Lily’s been digging through your books like an excited little puppy.”

Jess shrugs. 

Sasha smirks, like she can see something Jess doesn’t. “I can go down to the boardwalk with you tomorrow. I’m sure they’ll hire you, once I pitch you to em. I've been told I could probably convince God to let in a murderer at the pearly gates.”

“You don’t know me.”

“True,” Sasha says playfully. “But I am a very good judge of character, and you’ve got a Distillers shirt on, so I think we’ll get along just fine.”

Jess glances down at his shirt. He’d only worn it because he wanted to be absolutely sure he didn’t forget it. 

It had originally been Rory’s— he’d bought it for her at the concert and realized too late that it was too big on her. Jess had insisted she just keep it, but Rory was adamant that he take it instead, and now every time he wore it, he thought of her.

“C’mon,” Sasha beckons Jess inside. “Get some rest, because tomorrow you'll be going to work.”

Jess doesn’t say another word that night. As soon as his body hits the mattress, he’s out like a light.

****

The boardwalk makes Jess feel like a fish out of water, and he isn't sure that feeling will ever fade.

There are kids everywhere, and the carnival-like ambiance is too reminiscent of a Stars Hollow town event. The smell of the sea is nauseating, and he never thought he’d see the day, but the aroma of over-fried foods and weed makes him want to catapult himself into traffic. It’s too much at once.

He’s grateful, though, for Sasha. When she said she was going to pitch him to some friends at the bookstore, she meant it— she presents him as hard-working, reliable, punctual, friendly, all things he's sure he isn’t, but it's enough for them to hire Jess on the spot.

They put him to work immediately, in the back rooms with the inventory. It’s monotonous work, checking off boxes and shifting things around, but at least it’s fairly solitary. It reminds him a lot of Walmart— they’d worked him like a horse, but it was money in his pocket, and no one really cared to talk to him. Just like at Walmart, at the bookstore he’s just another worker bee, putting his head down and doing what he’s told.

When he returns to Jimmy’s, he has nothing much to say to anyone, even when Jimmy and Sasha both show interest in his day. He eats, showers, and collapses on the mattress.  


Though he’s exhausted, he considers calling Rory. It’s 3 a.m. on the East Coast, and Jess knows she won’t be awake, but he thinks about crawling to the phone anyways.

In the end, he only thinks about it, unable to make his limbs move that far. He rummages through his bag until he locates the boutonniere, tucked safely between a few shirts and a book. He twirls it around between his thumb and forefinger, a slant of moonlight from the front windows making it just visible in the dark. It’s already beginning to wilt.

The next day, he goes to the bookstore again. 

And the next day. 

And the next.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> in all honesty this and the next chapter were so hard for me to put together... i didn't plan on these two chapters, but after thinking it over i thought i should add them in to make the story (season) slightly more cohesive instead of just jumping to the end like i meant to, but damn... these chapters were hard. please be kind, but also, if you've been keeping up with my updates, i appreciate you so much!!


	11. 11.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> well. here we go. this truly went off the rails. i just wanna let y’all know that this au will not be in line with the rest of the series canon from here. originally I thought i could pull off just fixing S3 and leaving the rest of the series canon, but like... i can’t if i really want to carry out my version of how I wished S3 ended. so... consider the fic to be what would’ve happened if we got endgame literati from S3 forward. rip to logan & dean but jess is a bit different in this au!
> 
> thank you for reading! enjoy!

It’s a couple weeks before Jess talks to Rory again.

Unbeknowst to Jess, Rory had called him a few times, but he’d always been out, at work, or sleeping already. Jess made a conscious effort to call her before work and sometimes after— he thinks of the time Lorelai had chewed him out for blaming his lack of communication on work and really fucking tries— but they always seemed to be missing each other, both of them playing the world’s worst game of phone tag.

Sometimes, when his mind inevitably drifts to Stars Hollow and Rory, he contemplates phoning Luke, too, to tell him he’s okay. It never happens.

Work keeps him from the phone most of the time. He’s on his feet all day, and despite Jess’ cold demeanor, the manager has him working the main register by the second day. He doesn’t put up a front with any of the customers; he’s curt and robotic with his transactions, but girls still end up walking in and giggling at him, batting their eyelashes and whatnot. Some of his coworkers even end up teasing him about it, but he brushes them off, insisting that it’s ridiculous. It’s a bit weird, how easily his coworkers take to him, even when he’s surly and makes no attempt to befriend any of them. It’s a job, he keeps reminding himself, and he’s only there to work and collect a paycheck. 

Yet, if he’s being honest, he doesn’t loathe going to work. He’s surrounded by books and has an employee discount. It’s not the worst job in the world.

****

A few days after Jess’ second week of work, the store manager lets him off early. 

Jess has reorganized the shelves, checked inventory, carried the new shipments in on his own, checked the shelves a second time. He’s running through the travel books when the manager tells him he can clock out, and Jess doesn’t fight it, doesn’t wonder why they’d let a new hire go home before the end of his shift. He clocks out and walks home.

Jimmy’s isn’t _home_ , not really. It’s a house, yes, with more space than he’d ever had growing up or at Luke’s, and granted, Sasha _does_ make Jess sit down and eat dinner with the three of them every night.

But every time Jess speaks to Jimmy, he’s reminded that although they’re blood, they’re no more than strangers. They haven’t talked much in general. They hardly see each other, being in and out of the house at different times, and Jess still hasn’t made an attempt to master the art of small talk at dinner. Jimmy will talk about music, sometimes books or sports to see if any of it will catch Jess’ attention, but it’s pretty hit or miss, whether Jess will give him the time of day. They avoid talk of Liz and Luke, which bodes well for their newfound relationship. Jess is glad for it; the Danes siblings had made his head spin enough. He wasn't angry with Luke anymore, but he refused to process the state their relationship had been in when he left. His mother was off-limits for multiple reasons, and he had an intuitive feeling that Jimmy knew that.

Jess keeps Jimmy at arm’s length, most of his logic for the decision stemming from the fact that Jimmy kept himself thousands of miles away for years. Jess isn’t sure how to trust him, and Jimmy isn't the type of person who is inclined to purposefully build trust.

They’re coexisting. It's about what Jess expected.

His relationship with Jimmy aside, Jess finds himself acclimating to his new environment quickly, though he has moments here and there where he feels like a drifter in a strange land. It’s only been a little over two weeks since he’d left Stars Hollow, but already, it feels like years. He'd fallen into habit so effortlessly.

He reaches the house at a little past 7. Lily’s already waiting for him on the front patio, all of Sasha’s stray animals crowded at her feet. She looks like a dorky little Snow White, nose stuck in a book.

Admittedly, Jess likes Lily. She’s smart, he’d found, would probably be smarter than him. She liked books about as much as he did, the older records that she found in Jimmy’s record room, the ones Jess would pick out himself if he were her age. Although he'd told Lily to stay away from his books, by the fourth day of Jess’ stay, he was giving her books to borrow. She flew through them so fast that at first Jess wasn’t sure whether she was comprehending them at all.

Later, when he’d flip through the books Lily returned to him, he’d find Lily’s own annotations and realize that she had been keeping up with the deeper themes of the story, after all. Fairly quickly, they’d formed some sort of unspoken companionship, a sense of friendliness between them.

“Hey,” Jess greets as he slips through the gate. The animals turn to glare at him, but thankfully, they stay where they are.

Lily gives him a halfhearted wave. “You’re back early. Also, gate.”

Jess makes sure to shut the gate behind him. “Let me off early for some reason. How’s Slaughterhouse going?”

Against his better judgment, he’d just lent Lily Slaughterhouse Five.

“It’s kind of depressing.”

“With that title, you should’ve seen it coming.”

“Excuse me for trying to be positive.”

Jess shakes his head at her affectionately. “Your mom home? Is anyone using the phone?”

“Not right now. Otherwise, she’d be out here, where the connection is best.”

“Right.” Sasha wasn’t kidding when she said Lily loved Jimmy; she’s even beginning to sound like him.

Jess slips into the house, takes off his jacket, and immediately goes for the phone.

Jess doesn’t really expect Rory to pick up. It’s becoming habit to call and fall prey to Lorelai’s one liner voicemail intros, but he never leaves a message, mostly because he finds it unnecessary, partly because the message beep gives him a strange form of stage fright-- his mind always goes blank and he goes mute. That night, he almost hangs up before the message tone, his own learned helplessness starting to take it’s toll.

But then the ringing stops.

“Hello?” Jess whispers softly.

“Jess?”

Jess exhales nervously. Rory doesn’t sound well.

Taking the phone from the wall, he carries it to the front door, still pressed hard against his ear.

“Hey, are you alright?”

Like a dam breaking, Rory bursts into tears.

Jess really isn’t sure what he’s supposed to do, or say, or if he’s supposed to say or do anything. He listens as Rory sobs over the line, weeping to the point of speechlessness. He sets his jaw and blindly studies the windowsill, the way the sun filters through the glass and hits his hand, knuckles white from clutching the wood.

It takes Rory a minute to calm down, center her breathing.

“I kept missing your calls,” Jess says, when there’s a prolonged silence on the other line. “I swear, I’m not ignoring you—“

“I know. You call and you let it go to voicemail and say nothing. I can tell it’s you, you’re the only person I know that does that.” Rory says, and Jess feels himself relax momentarily. “You suck at using phones. That’s not news.”

“Then what is it?”

A crazy part of him imagines Rory breaking up with him, right over the phone. 

But it’s nothing like that, not at all.

“They named me valedictorian,” Rory says in a small voice. “I was competing with Paris, but… I got it.”

The phone nearly clatters to the floor. 

“Holy shit,” Jess says incredulously. “Fuck, Rory.”

“I know it’s supposed to be good, but I’m a wreck,” Rory moans. “I’m so stressed, I’ve been up for days studying and finishing projects, I’m pretty sure I’m drinking more coffee than water at this point, and now I have to write another speech, which will probably be awful because I’ve already written like, a thousand other essays and speeches. I’ve had nightmares where my speech is terrible and Headmaster Charleston calls me a bad egg in front of everyone, just like in Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory—“

“Slow down, Veruca Salt,” Jess says gently. “That won’t happen.”

“What if I completely mess up my finals and Yale takes back my admission?”

“They can’t do that.”

“Yes, they can.”

“They won’t,” Jess reassures her. “They won’t do that, because you’ll finish and get through this. You got this, I know you do.”

Rory sniffles noisily in a way that makes Jess wince. "Thanks." 

Jess lets go of the windowsill, tracks the lines of his palm. There's a lapse in the conversation, a pause filled with the wish of seeing the other person's face at that moment. Jess allows himself to wonder how Lorelai must've reacted to the news, likely proud but sympathetic to her daughter's worries. He wonders if Rory had told anyone else, Luke, maybe--

As if Rory can hear him thinking, she blurts, ”You’re the first person I’ve told. Besides Mom, obviously. I’m telling Lane tomorrow after school. She’s mad at you for not telling her you were leaving, by the way.”

”I’m honored,” Jess answers flatly, but the intent is sincere. “And Lane’ll get over it. I doubt she’s missing me that much.”

“Well, I’ve missed you,” Rory mumbles. "I feel like I'm going crazy."

“You’re telling me,” Jess answers dryly. “I’ve moved from one town full of freaks and weirdos to another. You’re the only one that kept me sane, I’m sure of that now.”

“I am Stars Hollow’s voice of reason,” Rory declares, less dejected than she was a second ago. Jess can hear her sheets rustling on the other end; she’s getting into bed. “Tell me about it.”

Jess is still concerned, thrown by her cathartic crying session.“You’re good?”

“Yeah,” Rory says unconvincingly. “C’mon, I wanna hear about you. You've been there a couple weeks, I want the review.”

“I know, but—“

“Jess. I just wanna… not think about school. I’m tired of thinking about it.”

Jess sighs, defeated, and in the greatest detail he can manage, he paints Rory a picture of California.

He tells her about Jimmy and Sasha, about Lily and her unconventional reading spots. He tells her about the boardwalk and the tourists and the bookstore being the reason he’d kept missing her calls.

Rory’s huffy about it when she hears the reason (“You could’ve left a message saying you were working.”), but when he mentions that she’s been missing his calls as well, she justifies it by saying her schoolwork has her occupied.

"You could've left a message," Jess parrots.

"I always chickened out, I don't know."

”C’mon, Rory.”

”Okay, then what's your excuse?”

"You said it yourself. Suck at using phones. Not really willing to learn."

That shuts Rory up pretty fast.

They begrudgingly agree that they both dropped the ball on contacting one another, and that’s that. They’re too drained to fight, longing trumping their frustration with the distance between them.

Jess admits how much he doesn’t hate California, how none of it is as bad as he expected, not Jimmy, or the sand, or working at a tourist trap. It was fast paced, more his scene than sleepy Stars Hollow. People could be annoying, but people were annoying wherever he went, and the constant stream of visitors reminded him vaguely of the streets of New York, albeit California was much more lax.

It’s still a temporary situation, but as Jess talks about it, he realizes it isn’t at all what he’d envisioned when he booked his plane ticket.

He wouldn’t mind staying for a little while, maybe even over summer, when the tourist numbers were at their peak. He had money coming in; all he needed was a place to sleep. If Sasha and Jimmy would agree to have him, he'd be set.

After a bit, Rory stops responding to Jess with “mhm’s” and quips about California. Jess just keeps talking, confident she’s still listening, but as he winds down, he second guesses himself.

“Rory?”

“Hm?” 

Jess recalls their weekend movie nights, Rory’s head in his lap. Sometimes, he’d been so dead tired he fell asleep during the movie, and other times, he would be the one to soldier on through all the way to the credits. When he shook Rory awake, she would look up at him, bleary-eyed and groggy, making that same small “hm?”, and Jess would just shake his head, replace a pillow beneath her head, and let her sleep as he gathered his things to go home.

“Go to sleep,” Jess murmurs.

“You owe me your address, mister,” Rory grumbles back. “And letters, and a message in a bottle.”

“Tomorrow,” Jess assures her after relaying Jimmy’s address— 260 Windward Circle; he’d finally gotten the street down. “I’ll call you again tomorrow.”

“You’re going?”

Jess leans heavily against the wall that the phone’s receiver is mounted on. “I left a couple weeks back, actually.”

“Not what I mean,” Rory whines. She's tired out of her mind; Jess has never heard her like this. “Don’t go yet. We won’t talk for the next two weeks. School, work, school…”

Jess sighs, presses the phone against his chest. She wasn't wrong; they were both preoccupied with their own work. He’d be lucky if he got to call her within the next week, let alone two. A letter took a week to go cross-country, and though it was initially a joke, it’s starting to look like the more viable method of communication.

“That’s it on my end,” Jess tells her. “I’ve been working most of the time.”

It’s a moment before Rory replies. “Read to me.”

Jess is taken aback, puzzled by her request. “What, like a bedtime story?”

Rory giggles. She must be delirious. “I guess so.”

Jess jams his thumbs over his eyes tiredly. “I can’t believe you.”

“You have to do what I say,” Rory insists. “I’m very tired and very upset.”

Jess snorts. She _is_ her mother’s daughter.

He pulls the phone away from his ear and kneels down beside his bag, tugging out the first book he touches from the monstrous heap that comprises the contents of his bag.

He smiles when he sees the cover of the book he's chosen. 

“Fine. How’s Howl sound?”

“Gritty,” Rory says amusedly. “I like it.”

Jess cranes his neck to see Lily out on the front porch. At that same instant, Lily turns to peer at Jess through the window. A shiver runs up Jess' spine. Maybe she wasn't as benevolent a ghost as Jess initially believed.

Jess moves away from the window. “If Jimmy comes home and starts giving me hell for reading this with Lily within earshot, I’m blaming you.”

“You have to introduce her to Ginsberg sometime. Better now than later.”

“Just hurry up and go to sleep, Gilmore.”

Jess sits in an armchair by the front door, as close as he can get to the front patio without physically being outside. Squeezing the phone between his cheek and shoulder, he starts to read.

He speaks in a low, even voice, continuing to read aloud even when Jimmy and Sasha return home, casting Jess concerned looks about his current situation. Jess ignores them. He reads until he finishes the book, several pages after Rory is asleep on the other end. 

He waits for a few seconds before he ends the call. The dial tone bounces around in his skull.

When Jess goes into the kitchen to pour himself some water, Sasha’s sitting on the counter nursing a bottle of beer. Her gaze follows him around the kitchen in an eerie, Mona Lisa-like way. He takes a seat at the kitchen table, facing Sasha head on.

“So there is a girl back home, huh,” Sasha’s eyes sparkle mischievously. “There’s been someone calling here for a couple of weeks, but I wasn’t sure if they were calling for you. They’d call and start to say something, but they’d hang up once I started talking.”

“That would probably be her,” Jess answers cooly, but his heart twinges with all the near misses they’d experienced in just two weeks. “Rory.”

“Rory,” Sasha repeats, testing the name on her tongue. “Interesting.”

“You have no idea.”

Sasha grins around the mouth of her beer bottle. “You like her.”

Jess avoids her eye. “Wouldn’t be sitting there reading to her like a goddamn kindergarten teacher if I didn’t.”

“Have you told her as much?”

Jess keeps his eyes trained on a Las Vegas magnet stuck to the fridge.

A film reel of memories flash through his brain: the day he returned to Stars Hollow, the late nights at the diner, the sound of her walking away from him on the bridge, the prom, the copy of Emma he’d left on her doorstep. The last time they saw each other before Jess flew to California.

All these moments, all these instances he could have said those three little words to her, and didn’t. He envisions the line he'd marked in Emma, and his mouth goes dry.

Sasha doesn’t try to shake anything out of him. She switches gears instead, taking the pressure off Jess.

“Jimmy would do the craziest things for me when we first started out. Bribes for midnight Ferris wheel rides, very teeny bopper 90’s rom-com things, you know? Felt like fuckin’ Julia Roberts.”

Jess makes a noise of disbelief. If Rory was her mother's daughter, maybe a small part of him was his father's son.

“What?”

Jess shakes his head. “Nothing, just...” he bites his lip, takes a drink of water. He debates divulging any kind of information to Sasha, but there’s something about her that just makes Jess want to talk. She seemed to have that effect on people. “Before I left I— I threw her a prom. We were supposed to go to the one the school put on together, but... I gave her her own prom. Seemed like she liked it a lot.”

“Hmm,” Sasha hums thoughtfully. “Jimmy was right.”

“Right?”

Sasha takes a long pull of her beer. “You’re kinda sensitive, just like him.”

“I am _not_ sensitive,” Jess argues irritably.

As if her point has just been proven, Sasha raises her eyebrows. Jess scoffs, waving her off.

“Are you going to go back to see her?”

Jess wraps a hand around his drink. “Now that I’m working here, she’s the only thing left for me back there. But I need money to go anywhere.”

Sasha nods. “You have that job, sweets, and it’s not like we’re charging you rent.”

Sasha hops off of the counter and takes an apple from a small basket on the kitchen table. “I hope it works out between you two. Jimmy and I didn’t think it’d ever work out between us, what with his past and my kid, but we never gave up. If you think she’s the one, don’t let her slip through your fingers. Maybe you’re soulmates, like Jimmy and me.”

“Soulmates? You believe in that crap?”

Sasha shrugs, glancing at him over her shoulder as she leaves the kitchen. “I didn’t, until I met Jimmy. It’s like... we’re meant to be together. So many things could’ve thrown a wrench into our relationship, but it worked out anyway. I know he doesn’t seem like the most put-together guy, but he’s supportive of me unlike anybody else. He shares in my successes, I share in his, that kind of thing. He’s my best friend, and like I said,” Sasha points to herself. “Good judge of character.”

****

Jess mulls over Sasha’s words as he tosses and turns in bed. He’d never been one for astrology or divine intervention. Fate was never something he poured his future into, only something he entertained when it suited him.

Yet, the more he sifts through his history with Rory— what were the odds he would meet someone who understood him so deeply in the cracked town of Stars Hollow?— he thinks maybe, _maybe_ Sasha is onto something when she talks about soulmates.

The world kept pushing them apart and pulling them back together. It was pushing them apart again. They were on opposite sides of the country, and Jess still needed to figure himself out.

Rory, however, was doing what she set out to do. She was going to Yale, she was a fucking valedictorian. Jess had always known she was capable, but to know that her work was paying off made him unspeakably proud.

He had been the first person Rory told about becoming valedictorian, right after Lorelai. He was the first person after her own mother that came to Rory's mind when good things happened to her.

That night, another plan plants itself in Jess’ head and sets itself in motion.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this fic really went from “nerd jess mariano watches rom-coms & throws a prom” to “jess realizes rory is his soulmate & would do anything for her” but i guess you could argue jess knew all that in the back of his mind in the canon storyline anyways!
> 
> ig this is also what i hope might’ve been included in windward circle had it been picked up... this is a “liz & jimmy r trash” zone but i honestly think jimmy & jess probably would’ve gotten along somehow.. that may be an unpopular opinion but! yea! stan sasha instead!


	12. 12.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There's a scene of mild violence in this chapter that involves Jess. I'm not the type to really go into detail about any kind of violence, but even so I don't want to make anyone who comes across this chapter uncomfortable. 
> 
> also, on another note, jess finally goes off on jimmy in this chapter. he snapped, as they say.

For the next few weeks, Jess throws himself into his work at the bookstore.

His new objective isn’t as complicated as a makeshift prom; it doesn’t require much thinking or planning.

This time around, he isn’t trying to escape from anywhere, and he doesn’t have a mysterious father looming in the back of his mind.

Jess has one more rom-com cliche up his sleeve. It’s simple—- once he has the means, he can see Rory again, if only for a flash of time.

The only thing he needs is a plane ticket to Hartford the day of Rory’s graduation.

Though their conversations are often brief and consist mostly of talk about their current reads and Stars Hollow foolishness, he and Rory call each other more often. Rory’s still busy with school, and Jess, with work. For the most part, they sidestep talking about more serious things, like how stressed Rory must be as graduation approaches, and how Jess has been shouldering every shift he can at work.

But overall, things are good. Finally, they’re good, separately and apart.

As the weeks go on, Jess gets used to talking to Jimmy and Sasha. They don’t make snide comments toward his icy attitude, don’t make him talk. Whenever he wants to talk to them, he does. If he doesn’t, they leave him to his own devices. 

It’s not a bad arrangement— they aren’t Luke, who made him feel suffocated, and they aren’t Liz, who gave him so much space he sometimes felt like the only person on earth. They give him the time to unwind on his own.

Jess starts to really settle in, getting the hang of this new chapter in his life. Even at work, before he knows what’s happening, he’s saying hi to his coworkers, calling them by name. He’s sharing book recommendations with customers, writing little blurbs for the books he likes best and leaving them at the displays.

Maybe it was the fact that Jess was miles away from the people and places that made him feel like he was being asphyxiated, or perhaps California’s ocean air was doing something to his brain, but Jess starts to become softer. He can feel it in his bones. 

He still has his walls up, but inch by inch, he’s letting them come down.

And then, without being conscious of it, Jess lets his walls fall a little too far.

****

Jess relishes in his nightly trek home, even when he feels like a zombie walking. 

He can see the stars in California, though not as well as in Stars Hollow, and by the time he leaves the bookstore, the boardwalk is a desolate land, sea and sky, and nothing else. It’s quiet, but he’s gotten used to it— for years he needed music to sleep, but since Luke’s he’d learned that it wasn’t always necessary. He didn’t always need to drown his thoughts.

On that particular walk home, he contemplates finally asking Jimmy and Sasha if he can stay for the summer once he returns from Connecticut. He’s feeling positive about the prospective conversation— they’ve all been on friendly terms lately. With some effort, he’s kept himself on Jimmy and Sasha’s good side.

That fickle thing called hope only gives Jess a few chances a season, though, and that night, the world is not in his favor.

He’s less than ten minutes from Jimmy’s when he hears footsteps behind him.

Jess brushes it off at first. He tells himself he would know if someone was trailing him. But then footsteps quicken and Jess gets his thoughts together, filtering through the possible outcomes.

He’s no stranger to this situation. If he’s so much as touched, he knows how this will end.

He squares his shoulders and puts his head down, tension pulling his muscles taut.

Jess doesn’t want to fight. He wouldn’t admit it aloud, but he hasn’t missed fighting. The adrenaline of a brawl used to be straight endorphins to his brain, it made him feel high, made him feel _good_. But he hadn’t needed fighting to feel good about himself in some time—not since, if he was being honest with himself, Chuck Presby. 

The footsteps become more distinct, advancing on him. A distant, gravelly voice calls out to him.

Jess’ ears begin to ring, a far off, trilling sound muffling any coherent thought he has. He gets a snippet of Dean’s voice in the chaos, right before he got socked in the face. He had known before it happened that he was going to be punched.

Jess thinks, _My luck is incredible_.

Then someone grips his shoulder roughly, yanking him backward, and his mind empties.

Jess doesn’t even see the person’s face, just feels the impact of bone against his cheek. A hand scrambles for Jess’ jacket pocket, methodically searching, and Jess grabs it, twists it away from him instinctively.

Everything in him turns ravenous with the need to survive, the way it had in the darkest times of his childhood. Something buried in the depths of his body claws its way to the surface and comes out swinging.

It’s over in the blink of an eye. 

At the end of it all, the guy is laid flat, and Jess is sucking in deep breaths, his limbs buzzing. 

He isn’t bleeding, and as far as he can tell, neither is the guy on the ground, merely stunned. 

Jess shoves a hand in his pocket to reassure himself his wallet is still where he put it. It is.

He feels nothing as he walks away. Not the high of the fight, not the regret once it’s over.

Nothing.

****

Jess slinks through the back gate only to be met by Jimmy in the backyard, slouched in a plastic chair, listening to music through headphones.

Jimmy takes one look at Jess’ face and bursts into shocked laughter.

“What happened? Are you okay?”

“M’fine.”

“Don’t tell me you got mugged. I told you, it’s sketchy out on the boardwalk at night.”

Jess glares at Jimmy, pressing a few fingers along his face with his unmarred hand. The pain is beginning to deaden, but it radiates all the way to the back of his head, lingering there. For someone that didn't put up much of a fight, his attacker had landed a good first punch, which was inexplicably annoying.

Jimmy slides his headphones off. He steps forward, taking a closer look at Jess, his cheek, his hand, and frowns disdainfully.

“That’s gonna need some ice. What, did Danes never teach you to throw a proper punch?”

“Hey,” Jess spits out harshly, throwing the gate closed. A jab at Luke is the last thing Jess can stomach, especially when Jimmy's treating his current state with so little sensitivity. He's irritated, he's in pain, he’s numb, he’s everything at once, and he doesn't have time for this.

“You don’t get to say a damn thing about Luke. Not a thing.”

“Jess, it’s a joke—“

“I don’t care,” Jess retorts, sharp as knives. “Keep Luke’s name out of your mouth.”

Jimmy steps back, stunned. “Man, I didn’t know you like, liked Luke. Thought you tolerated him, that’s it.”

Jess laughs humorlessly, a metallic tang filling his mouth. “That’s right. It doesn’t mean I like you better.”

Jimmy’s eyebrows knit together; Jess has hit his target. “Whoa, relax. I thought we were doing okay. I’m trying, aren’t I?”

“Don’t flatter yourself,” Jess snaps. “You don’t have the greatest track record when it comes to trying.”

Striding past Jimmy, he starts toward the back door, exhausted with the conversation. His aches down to his bones— he wants to stop talking and go to sleep.

But Jimmy just won't take the hint.

“Let me get you ice. Your cheek will bruise.” 

Jimmy places a hand on Jess’ shoulder, and Jess whirls on him, shaking him off hard. 

“Don’t bother. I can take care of myself.”

The lost look on Jimmy’s face is maddening. “I’m just worried about you, Jess. I'd do the same for Lily, though I can't imagine her ever getting into a fight.”

The small, forlorn boy Jess has carried inside himself for years finally speaks up.

“Don’t you ever wonder why I’m not a nice, quiet kid like Lily? This isn’t even the first time I’ve had to defend myself on the street, not that you would know. I’m not exactly the most well-adjusted guy on the block, and it’s because of _you_. You cut the cord and bolted, and Liz never gave a shit about me after that, never wanted the responsibility of raising me, just like you. I had nothing, no one, until my mother decided she’d had enough of having a son and sent me off to Luke’s. I know you think Liz had my best interests in mind when she told you where I was, but I never asked for you to show up out of nowhere. I could’ve gone my whole life without knowing you, but I can’t, now, all because you suddenly decided you want to be a good guy. You think letting me crash here and—and trying to talk to me about music is enough to make up for the 18 years you weren’t around? Yeah, right.”

Jess’ voice is run ragged, even when he stops yelling. He’s on the verge of collapsing right there at Jimmy’s feet, but his mouth still manages to spit venom, anger sparking his words.

“I don’t want you to worry about me. I don’t _need_ you to worry about me. Hate to break it to you, but that ship sailed a long time ago.”

God, he’d been good. He’d been so good. He’d been getting along with Jimmy so well.

He’s kept everything bottled up for so long, shoved down within the trenches of his anger. But it’s all there now, dredged up from its crevices and out in the open.

Jimmy coughs, shuffling quietly away from Jess until his heel hits one of the legs of the plastic chair, and he teeters, forced to stop and face Jess head on, nowhere to run.

“What is it that you want from me, Jess?”

Jess exhales; his lungs feel rickety and weak. “I want you to leave me the fuck alone.”

He drags himself through the kitchen and into the bathroom, going through the motions of preparing for bed without looking at himself. He doesn’t change out of his clothes. Instead, he splays out on the mattress, sinking into its softness. He waits until he hears Jimmy’s footfalls retreat up the stairs, and only then does he curl up onto his side and close his eyes, sleep overtaking him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> don't ya just love how jess can never catch a break, even in this au... luckily i love him so he's going to get his happy ending!! i wanted jess to have some kind of emotional convo w jimmy about how he feels about his childhood bc i think we missed that a little in the show (although jess' i have nothing speech was so good n makes me cry!), as well some kind of glimpse into jess rlly loosening up & getting used to california.
> 
> bet y’all know where I’m going with this fic, huh :) pls stay tuned!! we’re gonna get there!!


	13. 13.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i've been sitting on this chapter for a few days bc i... can't decide if i like it or not but i'm trying to teach myself that things i create don't have to be perfect masterpieces for me to release them into the world, especially forms of artistic expression like writing!!
> 
> if you're struggling with being creative during this time, i support you and i believe in you! your art is beautiful and you got this!
> 
> so i hope you enjoy! if not, that's okay too!

The afternoon sun shakes Jess awake.

Spots of light dance before his vision as his eyes crack open. The right side of his face is aching, and he can hardly unclench his fist from its furled up position. He tries to shrink himself, make his body smaller so that the pain might lessen, too, but it’s futile.

The night before feels like a fucked up nightmare. A blast from his New York past.

But it isn't a nightmare-- it's real, and his bruised body is proof of that. Jess is in California, in his father’s house on a goddamn mattress.

And he's late for work.

Jess scrambles to his feet, but as soon as he enters the kitchen, he stops in his tracks.

Sasha’s sitting at the kitchen table, munching thoughtfully on a piece of toast, as though she’s been waiting for him.

Jess remembers the bookstore and moves past her to the refrigerator, throwing it open and staring, but not seeing its contents. Sasha’s eyes are boring into him, unrelenting.

“You’re letting all the cold air out,” Sasha mumbles. 

Jess grabs a juice box—- they’re normally reserved for Lily—- and slams the door closed. 

“Gotta get to work,” Jess says gruffly, making a beeline for the back door.

Jess has his hand on the handle when Sasha says, “I called you in sick.”

Jess turns to Sasha, bewildered and aggravated. “You _what_?”

Sasha takes another staged, nonchalant bite of her toast. “Come sit down here.”

Jess huffs, his blood pressure rising. “I’m going to work, _Mother_.”

Sasha’s bored expression doesn’t crack, but her voice hardens, cold as steel. “Jess, I’m not your mother, and I’m not trying to be. One bookish kid is enough. But you better get your ass in a chair, or this is gonna get ugly.”

Jess tightens his fist over the door handle. He sees himself walking out, Sasha chasing after him. She wouldn’t let him go, wouldn't let him leave without knowing he was okay. It wasn’t the kind of person she was.

He drops his hand from the door and jerks a chair out from the kitchen table, planting himself in front of Sasha. He throws the juice box on the table, and it skitters across the wood.

“Happy?” Jess seethes. 

Sasha gives him a cat-like grin. “Very.”

Standing, Sasha fills a plastic bag with ice, and without explanation, offers it to Jess. “Here.”

Jess stares at it, scowling. Sasha narrows her eyes, and without warning, she tosses the plastic bag in Jess’ lap.

“Hey!” Jess picks up the bag like it's burned him. After a moment of realization, he presses it against his injured hand, which instantly becomes soothed. “What is your problem this morning?”

“You tell me,” Sasha shoots back. “Why did I wake up at midnight last night to someone yelling in my backyard? Why did I come downstairs and find Sylvester Stallone’s stuntman passed out in my living room?”

Jess turns to the window, where one of Sasha’s stray cats is basking in the sunlight, eyes closed in bliss. Lucky bastard.

Retying her bandana, Sasha continues to press Jess, bringing her energy down a few notches. “What happened, Jess? What did you do?”

Jolting back to attention, Jess’ temper flares, ignited by the familiarity of being pushed into taking the blame for something he didn’t do. 

“Nothing. I didn’t do anything.”

He waits for the reprimand, the accusation that he’s lying.

The blow never comes. Instead, Sasha's voice softens, all its jagged edges blunted.

“So then tell me. Why’s your face bruised like a peach, with a hand to match?”

Jess glances down at his hand, the bruises sprouting along his knuckles. “Someone tried to take my wallet. The guy had a good right hook. I was protecting myself. ”

Sasha hums attentively. “And Jimmy?”

Jess takes a deep breath, looking past Sasha and into the living room. His anxiety spikes, and evidently, Sasha notices, because she scoots her chair a little closer to his, blocking his view of the living room.

“He’s not here right now. Lily’s at school, too. You can tell me.”

Brown eyes meet blue, and Jess bites down hard on his cheek. He wonders, not for the first time, if Sasha is a witch, an unearthly being sent to wrestle the truth out of him. Whenever they’re one on one, he always ends up admitting something.

This instance is no different.

The truth leaks out, a slow trickle that transforms into a landslide before he can catch himself.

“He doesn’t have to pretend that he gives a crap about me. I’m nothing more than a moral obligation to him. If he wanted to know what kind of person I became, he wouldn’t have left that hospital in the first place. You wanna know how I am, actually? Before I came here I got into a fight at a house party and wrecked the whole house. They almost pressed charges against me. When that person crossed me last night, I knew exactly how to knock him around so he wouldn’t fuck with me again. _That’s_ the kind of guy I grew up to be.”

Sasha doesn’t say anything for a bit. She glances toward the cat on the windowsill, blessedly unaware of the tension in the kitchen, lost in the warmth of the sun.

“You know,” Sasha begins softly, “At first I wasn’t sure I wanted you to stay here. I didn’t know Jimmy had a son, and I admit, when you told me who you were, it made me nervous. Jimmy always tells me he and Liz were bad together, really bad. And I couldn’t imagine what kind of a person you would be, having grown up with a mother that was selfish, a father that was absent. I was mostly afraid that you would be everything I hated about the man Jimmy used to be.”

Jess bites down harder onto his cheek, zeroes in on the sting.

Sasha looks him in the eyes once more, and her expression holds a tenderness that breaks Jess’ resolve to stay cold.

“But Jess, you’re not as bad as you think you are. You think you’re fooling people with that hard exterior. You’ve only been here a few weeks, and already I can see what that girl Rory sees in you, what Lily likes so much about you. You work hard to protect yourself, but once you let yourself loosen up, you’re so… you’re easy to get along with. You’ve got intelligence and wit, both. You make an effort to get along with Lily. You take care of yourself. If anything, you've made my life better.”

Sasha grins. “And we really do like the same music, too, so that’s a plus in my book.”

Jess moves the bag of ice from his hand to his cheek, the condensation running off of his skin in rivulets. He stops chewing the inside of his cheek.

“Whatever good thing it is that you see in me,” Jess whispers bitterly, “It’s no thanks to him.”

“I believe you,” Sasha replies. “I’m sure that’s one hundred percent you.”

 _It isn’t_ , Jess thinks, but he doesn’t have the energy to explain it-- it being Luke and Rory and their refusal to give up on him.

“I’m sure it’ll blow over. I know how it is, sometimes you just gotta give the other person some space for everything to sort itself out and calm down. Jimmy can’t turn back time, but he does care, Jess. He’s trying his best, same as you.”

“Sure,” Jess says, but his heart isn’t in it. He’s never been one to hold a grudge, but he’s got 18 years to back up his decision if wanted to.

“Tell me something, though,” Sasha relaxes, sitting back in her chair. “You’ve been picking up your coworker’s shifts, and my friend Pete at the bookstore told me you’re a model worker. You work for as long as they possibly let you. He says it’s like you’ve been there for years, not months. What’re you working so hard for?”

“I’m saving.”

Sasha rolls her eyes. “Yes, that’s obvious. But you’re working toward something, too, aren’t you?”

Jess flexes his bruised hand, twitching when a zing of pain travels up his arm. He contemplates fibbing, but honesty takes a hold of him before he can really decide to lie.

“I’m trying to go to Connecticut for Rory’s graduation.”

Sasha’s eyes widen; whatever she had been expecting, it clearly wasn’t that.

“But you just left there.”

“I know.”

“You’ve been here a little over a month.”

“Yeah, Sasha, I know.”

Sasha squints at him, like the puzzle pieces of his decisions aren’t clicking. “I don’t get it.”

Jess scoffs; he hyperfocuses on the juice box, the closest thing to him that isn't Sasha's interrogative gaze. “I wasn’t planning on it, alright? It came up, and I just… want to go.”

“To see a girl walk across a stage for a piece of paper.”

Jess' head snaps up. He doesn't appreciate Sasha's tone. "Weren’t you the one that encouraged me to go see her?”

Sasha’s expression twists sourly. “Yeah, but I didn’t expect it to be this soon, or for this reason. Although, maybe I should have seen it coming. Just the other day Lily showed me a boutonnière that was hidden between the pages of a book you gave her."

Sasha's expression contorts further, touched with amusement. "God, you’re one lovesick puppy, aren’t you?”

Deciding he isn’t in the mood to be teased, Jess pushes his chair back, the legs scraping angrily across the tile. “Whatever, I get it, you think it’s lame. I’m gonna go for a walk.”

Snickering, Sasha leans forward and puts a gentle hand on Jess’ arm before he can stand up and leave. “Calm down, would you? I’m just giving you a hard time and being nosy."

Jess’ gaze falls to Sasha’s hand on his arm, but she doesn’t shy away.

This is an opening, he thinks, to ask about staying for the summer.

He gathers his courage in the center of his chest, allowing the words to flow from him before he loses his nerve. 

“It’s only for a couple of days at most,” he explains, his tone stilted. "Last night, before... I was thinking…if you’ll let me stay for the summer—”

Sasha frowns, effectively silencing Jess in the midst of his sentence. His courage extinguishes in less than a second, leaving him hollow.

“I’m gonna tell you now, if you’re gonna leave so soon and you expect to waltz back here with everything all gumdrops and rainbows, you have to talk with Jimmy about that. I don’t mind you coming back, but you’re his son. You have to ask him, too.”

Jess freezes up. “We’re not really buddy-buddy right now.”

“Still," Sasha says, shrugging, "You should talk to him before you go. You don’t have to forgive him, but you should see Rory with a clear conscience, don’t you think?”

Jess pulls away from her touch. “Thanks for the day off.”

Walking out the back door, Jess tosses the melted ice in his fist to the ground, and Sasha makes no move to stop him.

****  
Jess waits it out. He lets a few days pass and sinks into his silent, moody ways. The walls rise, brick by brick, and Jess allows it to happen.

His bruises heal, but the anger from his fight with Jimmy clings to him with an iron grip. He knows it’s fruitless anger, one that does nothing, neither fixes nor destroys, but it sits in his chest like a stone, waiting to be smoothed, worn down into nothing. 

It doesn't take much time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> haha... when i said we only had a little more to go like 4 chapters ago and i'm here at chapter 13... but now i think i can say we only have a little more to go. for now, i'm planning on this story having 15 chapters. that's subject to change of course, but not by much.
> 
> for those of you who are continuing to follow this story, thank you, as always. for any of you who just discovered this story, thank you.


	14. 14.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> threw in a little snippet of dialogue from s2...
> 
> hope you enjoy, thank you for reading!

A week from his fight with Jimmy and two days before Rory’s graduation, Jess purchases a plane ticket for Hartford. 

He sits alone in the backyard the night before his flight goes out, drinking a stolen beer and listening to the distant cars on the freeway. He revels in the nostalgic noise, the way it reminds him of New York.

Jess closes his eyes, the sounds of the night filling his ears, and tries to imagine home.

The stuffy, cramped apartment he and Liz had shared in New York pieces itself together in his mind. 

The living room, always littered with God knew what, but with the most comfortable couch he'd ever sat on. The tiny, sad excuse of a kitchen. His bedroom, with the loose floorboard that housed his favorite books and a bottle of bourbon. The finicky window that led to a fire escape, a regular safe haven to steal to when sleeplessness dug its nails into Jess’ skin.

Behind his eyelids, the images transform, bend themselves into new scenery.

A comfy lazyboy, its cushions flattened with use. Warm tones, brown and beige and plaid. A worn leather couch, molded to fit two bodies, one tucked into the side of another.

Jess’ eyes pop open.

_Jesus Christ._

It’s at that unlucky moment that Jimmy collapses into the chair next to him. Jess straightens up, pushes any emotion he’s grappling with far, far away. He stares ahead, trying to block the outline of his father in his peripheral vision.

The tension settles around them, thick and choking. Jess isn’t the first to break the silence, but then, being anything other than cold and quiet isn’t his forte. 

Jimmy tries to remain poised, subtle, but ends up grasping for the most obvious topic.

“You’re going back to Hartford, huh? The early flight. Sash said you mentioned something. Feels bad, y’know, about us not talking.”

Jess doesn’t respond-- he’s already getting ticked off, the sound of Jimmy’s voice a trigger.

“Jess.”

Jess‘ jaw clenches hard. He holds onto his self-control like a lifeline.

“Jess, come on man, talk to me.”

Jess side eyes Jimmy, his patience splintering to pieces.

“I have nothing to talk to you about.”

Jimmy sighs. “Look, I’m sorry about... about everything. You gotta know that. All those things you said, you were right, I can’t make up for all of it, and I know that I can’t. If I could do everything over again, not be such a screw up, I would. Between us, she was always the brains and the brawn, your mom. I was always hopping from job to job, didn’t have two pennies to rub together most of the time, you know? Liz was the one that was good about finding ways to get money, she had her wacky businesses and her waitressing, it was a way to pay rent, have a little left over. I thought I did you a favor. I didn’t know it would be so bad for you, growing up with Liz.”

Jess hisses sharply through gritted teeth as if physically hurt.

“You know Liz, one week she’s planning on selling jewelry on the sidewalk, the next she wants to quit working and move to New Jersey. That should’ve been your first red flag. That ‘leftover’ cash? Didn’t go towards food, that’s for sure.”

Jimmy leans back in his chair, shoulders sagging with the weight of his guilt. “I didn’t know she would get worse.”

Jimmy’s words hang in the air, haunting and horrible. Jess finishes his drink and lets the bottle swing freely from his fingers.

The ugliest part of Jimmy’s apology, even worse than the fact that Jess can feel Jimmy’s remorse, is Jess knows Jimmy’s telling the truth. How could Jimmy have known how _bad_ it would get? 

No one, not even Liz herself, could have predicted just how deep the hole she dug herself would become. She was still in there, and she would continue to be there indefinitely. But that wasn’t Jimmy’s doing.

Jess scrubs a hand over his eyes. He’s tired of being angry on behalf of the little boy he used to be.

“Jimmy, I told you I wasn’t gonna come here and bust your balls. But I came here because I wanted answers, and I got them.”

“And now you’re going back?”

“Yep.”

Jimmy clicks his tongue, wiping at his brow. “If I had known you were gonna be here for a few weeks, decide you hated me, and then run back to Connecticut, I woulda—“

“It’s not forever. I have a return ticket,” Jess interrupts through clenched teeth. He readjusts his grip on his beer, holds it like a weapon. “And I don’t hate you. I wish I did, but I don’t.”

Jimmy leans forward in his chair, intrigued by this bit of information.

“Then why have you been freezing me out?”

Jess seriously thinks about not saying anything. Letting things go, again. Not asking for help because he’s afraid it’ll mean he’s not as capable of taking care of himself as he thought.

He’s always thought he would make his own way, but he never imagined California would be a place that he could survive in, that he could grow to like. It isn’t the dream arrangement, but it would be enough for the time being.

Jess doesn’t want to ask Jimmy for a chance, doesn’t want to be at the mercy of his own vulnerability. He doesn’t want to take his walls down, undo his fortress with his own hands.

His thoughts linger on Sasha’s words from their last talk, about asking Jimmy if he could stay. Jess starts to speak, and it’s as if the words are coming from an entity outside his body, someone else controlling his words. He imagines taking down his walls, one stone at a time.

“If I went back east for a couple days and came back here, would you let me stay?”

“What’re you talking about?”

This snaps Jess back into his body. 

He clutches his beer bottle so hard he’s afraid it might shatter. 

“I’m talking about staying here long term. For the summer, at least. I’m not running back to fucking Stars Hollow the first chance I get. That whole town wants my head on a pike. It’d be insane to go back.”

Jimmy blows out air through his lips, like he’s been whacked with an invisible baseball bat. 

“Well, uh. I mean, you said it wasn’t gonna be that permanent of a situation—“

Jess gets to his feet; he knows an excuse like the back of his hand. “Forget it.” 

Jimmy puts a hand on his arm, halting him.

“Now, wait a minute. I’m not finished. You can come back. You can stay indefinitely if that’s what you want. I don’t have anything to offer you except that mattress in the living room, but I’m sure you’ve uh... put that together already.”

Jimmy starts to mumble about how the kitchen appliances are worse for wear, as well, but Jess is stuck on how willing Jimmy is to let him return to living in his house. It’s such a 180 from when he’d first arrived in California.

“I had to beg you to stay when I first got here.”

Jimmy runs his hand through his hair. “Things… things have changed. Sasha and Lily, they like you. I-I’m getting to know you. I wanna keep getting to know you.”

There were two versions of Jimmy Mariano in Jess’ mind—— one that was frazzled, eccentric, but not necessarily mean-spirited or cruel, and another that he’d constructed in his mind from anecdotes, from others who knew Jimmy before Jess met Jimmy. That version was a man that Liz didn’t want anything more to do with, a man that Luke vehemently hated. It was the version that Jess kept locked in his mind for years, the only version of Jimmy he’d known until a month ago.

Jess watches as the second version of Jimmy falls away in his mind, crumples like a paper cutout. The Jimmy of now, the Jimmy in front of him, remained. Not a good man, but a man trying very hard to do good.

“I can start paying rent,” Jess offers dumbly. “I’ll be like a dog that pays rent.”

Jimmy shakes his head. “No, it’s alright. I owe you, don’t I, for being such a shitbag of a father?”

Jess blinks at him, surprised but unwilling to deny it.

“Okay.” It’s the only way he can respond.

Jimmy nods sharply. “And uh, before I forget...” 

Jimmy pulls a small black flip phone from his pocket. He holds it out to Jess as an offering.

“Sasha told me to tell you to take this.”

Jess is reluctant to accept it; he hasn’t had a cellphone before, and he doesn’t particularly want one. Jimmy doesn’t retract his offer. 

“C’mon, just take it,” Jimmy urges. “You might be grown up, but Sasha wants to make sure you get to Connecticut safe, and... so... so do I.”

Jimmy sheepishly stares down at his flip flops, still holding the phone out. 

Hesitantly, Jess takes the phone from Jimmy’s outstretched palm. 

“I’ll let you know when I land, then.”

“Good.”

They avert each other’s eyes. Jess swears he can hear both their hearts pounding.

Quietly, Jimmy says, “So this girl, Rory... she's worth the trouble of going to Stars Hollow?”

Jess recalls the first time he met Rory—- the picture of her on the mantelpiece, the spat with Lorelai, Rory’s bright-eyed innocence, her playfulness ( _I don’t even know you./Well, don’t I look trustworthy?_ ). He had no idea just what kind of role she would play in his life from that day forward.

But he’s starting to understand what it is about her that genuinely makes him want to give her miles and miles.

Jess closes his hand around the phone.

“Yeah. She is.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i know it won't be everyone's cup of tea, but for the last chapter, we're finishing this off in rory's pov. my darling girl. i've honestly gotten so comfortable writing in jess' pov, but i thought if we're gonna end this s3 au right, we gotta put the spotlight on rory. gotta love her. stay tuned!!


	15. 15. rory's ending

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> when rory said *insert rory's phone call to jess in the s3 season finale here*, i felt that. this chapter (& this entire fic) is my response to that, with a happy twist, bc rory deserves it, and jess deserves to be more than the demonized boy that broke rory’s heart. he loved her from the jump. he looked it UP. he knew from the moment he first saw her that they were meant to be together, and she knew it, too. and with the power i hold in my hands i give you: the season finale, atdaokai style.
> 
> i hope you enjoy, and i hope i did these kids justice.
> 
> (a little bit of dialogue from s1 & s3 included)

Rory’s graduation goes off without a hitch. Her speech is perfect, the ceremony is perfect.

In a flash, it’s over.

Rory's done with Chilton, Yale is on the horizon and her mother finally has the green light to open the inn of her dreams, thanks to her master manipulating skills and her grandparents’ affluence. Everything’s good.

When she steps into the courtyard, taking in her classmates with their families, it feels like she’s stepped through a time portal. It seems like only yesterday she was fighting with Paris and trying to convince Mr. Medina she’d been hit by a deer.

Two years had passed since then.

Her phone rings just as they’re preparing to leave. Overwhelmed by her emotions and the knowledge that the next morning she’d be on a plane to Europe, as well as confused by the number that flashes on the screen, Rory answers it. 

There’s silence on the other end. Lorelai throws her a puzzled look.

“Who is it?”

“Hang on.”

The silence continues, but Rory keeps trying anyway, saying “hello?” over and over as she retreats into one of the empty corridors at Chilton in order to hear better. 

“Seriously,” she says after a minute of incessantly repeating herself. “Whoever this is, if you don’t start talking, I’m going to hang up. I know all about overseas scam calls.”

“Jeez—finally. Give me a minute, would you? That was some speech you gave, I’m still a little weepy.”

Rory’s heart comes to a screeching stop as the voice on the other end echoes in her ear, feeling so much closer than it should. She would know that voice anywhere, in the midst of a crowd, across a crackly phone line. Anywhere.

She whips around, and there’s Jess at the end of the hallway, a small black flip phone pressed against his ear. 

He’s dressed in jeans and a leather jacket, far too overdressed for the springtime Connecticut weather, much less the sunny, dry weather of California. He’s also a touch more tan than he was when Rory last saw him, but his hair is still as unruly as when she’d seen it last. 

He looks... _good_. He looks like himself, but changed somehow. He’s lighter in spirit, less bogged down by demons Rory can’t see.

Maybe she truly has stepped through a time portal.

“Jess.”

Jess lowers the phone, staring at Rory with hopeful, anxious eyes. Rory can feel her heart hammering away, she’s frantic and incredulous and—

And she’s running down the hallway, the first time in two years she’s ever run down a Chilton hallway, launching herself at Jess. 

She knocks him back with the force of her impact, but he grasps onto her tightly, holding her close. Jess whispers a soft “hi,” turning his face into her hair.

“Hi,” Rory says, tears springing to her eyes.

A mere month and a half had seemed an eternity. The last two weeks had been a tornado of final essays and exams and calls cut short. Now, to hear his voice, to touch him is jarring, a shock to her system. 

They stay like that, clutching each other, breathing ragged as though both of them have been running for a long time, fast and hard.

Jess pulls away first, hands on either side of Rory’s face. He smirks when he realizes there are tears in her eyes, but Rory doesn’t care.

Jess is there, in her arms. He’d come back.

“Congratulations,” Jess says gently. “You know, I thought they’d be more uptight about people hanging around near the back. Expected to face a few guards, maybe some pissed off teachers, but nah, nothing.”

“I can’t believe this,” Rory breathes incredulously, hardly hearing him. “I thought you said the bookstore had you scheduled almost every day.”

During their last phone call, that’s exactly what Jess had said— in a vague, flippant tone of voice, he said the bookstore was keeping him painfully busy, scheduling him to work for six out of seven days of the week.

Jess shrugs noncommittally. “I asked for time off. You said your graduation was today.”

Rory’s perplexed. “When did I say that?”

“A couple months ago or something, before I left.”

Rory gapes at him, bewildered. She recalls mentioning Chilton’s graduation to Jess, but only in passing— she’d been griping about how each student had a limited number of tickets for guests, how she felt guilty about being unable to invite the whole town, since they’d practically raised her. 

Jess had made a joke about how there was no need to bring the circus to the wealthy, the rich were already clowns as it was— but he’d never given any impression that he wanted to go, or that he would if Rory asked.

Rory wasn’t given the chance to bring it up again, but she merely assumed that flying back to Connecticut for a one day event was ludicrous for Jess to even consider.

She didn’t expect him to do just that, fly across the country to see her graduate, much less remember the date. Jess had an impeccable memory, and she’d told him so, a long time ago.

_You read everything, you remember everything._

Back then, she’d meant quotations from books, song lyrics, diner orders. Rory never imagined that Jess would remember something pertaining to _her_.

“But the plane ticket must’ve cost you so much,” Rory says, still trying to piece together, how, exactly, he was standing in front of her, flesh and bone. “And-and the phone— you hate phones.”

“The bookstore pays a good amount,” Jess explains smoothly. He jiggles the phone in his hand. “This isn’t mine. It’s on loan. Jimmy’s.”

Jess hadn’t talked about his father much during their calls, and Rory didn’t want to pry. Curiosity about the infamous Jimmy Mariano flashes through Rory’s mind, but it’s quickly replaced by shock as she’s startled by another presence in the corridor.

“Jess?”

Rory turns to see none other than Luke, slack-jawed. Right behind her, Jess exhales sharply. 

They weren’t expecting to see each other, that much was evident.

“Didn’t know you were gonna be here,” Jess mumbles, confirming the obvious.

He sounds— kind of glad, Rory notes. But Luke doesn’t quite detect that.

“I’ve been trying to contact you for weeks,” Luke tells Jess, frustrated. “I even called your mom to ask for Jimmy’s number, but she said she didn’t know it. I didn’t know—I had no idea whether or not you got there—“

Luke scrubs a hand over his face, exasperated. “Come outside with me. We need to talk.”

“Luke—“

“Nope. Outside, let’s go, right now.”

Sighing, Jess shoulders past Rory, trailing Luke as they walk back out to the courtyard.

Rory looks after them long after they’ve gone, stupefied.

So Jess hadn’t been in touch with Luke since he left. Rory can’t help but feel a smear of guilt; she’d seen Luke nearly every single day since Jess left, but they never talked about him. Rory had come to the conclusion that since Jess had left Luke a letter and told her that he was leaving in person, she and Luke were on the same page, and therefore, if Luke didn’t want to mention his nephew, then Rory wouldn’t talk about him. She’d believed, wholeheartedly, that she’d been doing Luke a kindness by never bringing up Jess.

Her thoughts are jumbled when she sees Lorelai at the entrance of the hallway, looking around for her.

Spotting her, Lorelai saunters over. 

“Am I crazy, or did I just see Jess out there with Luke? Or is Luke taking in other troubled nephews that I don’t know about?”

Rory shakes her head. “That was him.”

Lorelai looks taken aback, a little annoyed. “How did he even know to be here?”

An acute pain slices through Rory’s chest. He _remembered_. “Can we talk about it later, please?”

Lorelai understands instantly; thank god for mother-daughter telepathy. “Come on. I want to make one more stop before we go.”

Rory lets Lorelai sling her arm around her shoulders as they wander through Chilton for the last time, saying goodbye to another chapter of her life.

****

On the drive home, Rory tells Lorelai everything— the prom, the phone calls. California and Jimmy Mariano, Lorelai knew about, but not the prom, not the phone calls. Rory fills in the gaps.

Lorelai listens in stunned silence, a rarity. After a short detour to Luke’s—- during which Rory doesn’t dare look at the diner for even a second—- they pull into the driveway of the Crapshack. Lorelai cuts the engine, and finally, she says something.

“I didn’t know Jess was a big grand gestures kind of guy. I wonder where he got the idea to do all of that.”

Rory didn’t think that was where Lorelai was going to start.

“Well— he isn’t. I don’t know where he got the idea, but Lane and Dave helped him put the prom together.”

Lorelai snorts. “Of course. You know, last time I left you and Jess alone, you fought. This time, he throws you a prom and tells you about his deadbeat dad. The things you two get up to when I’m not around.”

Rory flushes at Lorelai’s suggestive tone. “Jess just wanted to do something nice before he left. I feel like he was trying to find the right way to tell me about his dad and apologize for—- everything, and that— the prom was it.”

Lorelai shakes her head in amusement. “I swear, they could write a whole coming of age movie about that kid. It wouldn’t be too hard to cast someone to play him, there’s plenty of 18 to 24 year olds out there with pompadour hair and a Kurt Cobain complex.”

Rory scowls. “You’re hilarious.”

“I’ve got a knack for coming up with filmmaking ideas. Someone should hire me.”

“Mom.” 

Seeing the look on Rory’s face, Lorelai sobers up. “What?”

Rory folds her arms over her chest. “All that stuff I knew he was going through— it wasn’t just him being angry and picking fights. He talked, finally, and he _came here to see me graduate_. I just... isn’t that crazy?”

Rory balls her hands into fists, pulling in on the emotions threatening to rise to the surface.

Lorelai undoes her seatbelt and sighs, turning to offer Rory a tired, patient smile.

“Rory, you went to New York to see him.”

“Yes, but—“

Lorelai’s smile softens. “That meant something, didn’t it? That you went all the way there for him?” 

Rory says nothing, and she isn’t sure Lorelai’s asking for an answer.

“I’m not saying that I would ever vouch for that kid, but…” Lorelai glances down at her lap, then back up at Rory. “I think it means something that he came back just for you.”

Dumbstruck with her heart in her throat, Rory stares at her mother. There are no words swirling around in her mind, only feelings, feelings she can’t pin down. They’ve been there for quite a while, since the night of prom and probably before then, taking up space in her mind, her heart.

Instead of offering more cryptic words, Lorelai leans over and squeezes Rory’s shoulder. “Ice cream and The Graduate await. Let’s go, valedictorian.” 

Laughing wildly, Lorelai opens the driver’s side door. “God, I will never get tired of saying that. My daughter, Rory Gilmore, the valedictorian.”

They slide out of the Jeep, and Rory loops her arm through her mother’s as they enter the house. Lorelai puts the movie on, and thoughts of Jess are lost to Simon and Garfunkel and Rocky Road ice cream, if only for a couple hours.

****

Jess knocks on her window a little before 10.

When Rory unlatches the window, she isn’t too surprised to see him standing there staring up at her, expectant.

She is surprised, however, when Jess asks her to step out for a while, and without even questioning him, she does, clambering out of her tiny window and onto the lawn.

It’s a clear, starless spring night, the stillness so perfect and serene that although Rory and Jess don’t speak as they walk to the town square, the silence doesn’t feel unwelcome or uneasy. They stop by the bench in the gazebo, a perfect halfway point between the Gilmores’ and Luke’s. 

Now, they sit a little ways apart, both of them unsure how close is close enough. Rory’s anxious, but it’s a nostalgic anxiety, one that feels like butterflies and first (second) times.

“Do you remember when you asked me to skip out on Sookie’s welcome dinner for you?” Rory asks suddenly, thinking back to the first time they’d met.

She has her hands in her pockets, and they’re both quiet, staring down at the ground.

Jess nods stoically. “Still think you should’ve taken me up on my offer.”

“Well, look at us now,” Rory murmurs, studying Jess’ profile as she speaks—- he seems sharper in the moonlight, more mature. “Sitting on a bench, staring at our shoes. We even climbed out the window.”

Jess glances at her, and Rory’s eyes automatically bounce away, cheeks burning. It’s unsettling to have him looking at her again, to have those dark, thoughtful eyes searching her.

“Huh,” Jess mumbles, amused. “I should’ve known you’d agree eventually.”

Rory snorts, a smile creeping onto her face as she relaxes beneath his gaze. “But I was right, wasn’t I? There’s nothing to do. It’s boring in Stars Hollow after 9.”

“Nah,” Jess says. “We would’ve had fun, you and me.”

Rory hums to herself, skeptical and a little embarrassed by Jess’ implications. Knowing what she knew now, knowing Jess, he’s probably right. They would’ve managed to make their own fun.

Across the street, the light in the apartment above the diner flicks on. Jess stares at it for a prolonged moment, shoulders tense.

Unconsciously, Rory reaches over and places her hand on his. 

“So... is everything okay between you and Luke? He seemed upset before.”

Jess stiffens, and part of Rory is worried she’s overstepped, ruining the good vibes between them. 

Jess’ face remains smooth, impassive. “Yeah. It’s fine. We talked.”

“That’s all?”

“Yup.”

Rory leans toward him, tries to catch his gaze. He purposefully makes a show of moving his head around so they can’t make eye contact. Brow furrowed and jaw set, Rory places her hands on either side of Jess’ face.

“You swear everything’s fine?”

“Scout’s honor.”

“You’re not a Boy Scout.”

“Honor’s honor.”

When Rory continues to glare at him, Jess gently moves Rory’s hands from their hold on him, sighing in surrender. “He just offered to let me stay at the apartment, but I told him I’m going back to California for the summer. Oh, and he still has my car.”

Rory frowns at Jess, unconvinced that that was all they discussed, but she knows Jess won’t budge. He’d been talking a lot more, but he could be stubbornly silent when he wanted to be. There were things he kept to himself, things he wouldn’t share, not yet, maybe not ever.

Rory wants to be understanding, but disappointment still gnaws on her heart at Jess’ mention of returning to California. She wouldn’t say so to anyone, but when she saw Jess in that Chilton hallway, she wanted to believe he was coming back to stay.

Rory tries to keep her voice even, but it’s no use. 

“You’re not staying?” 

Jess merely sighs. “No. I have the bookstore job, it pays more than anywhere here. Luke kept the apartment offer open in case I decide I want to start working at the diner again, so if I wanted to come back, I guess I could.”

“Do you?” Rory asks.

Jess raises his eyebrows at her.

“Want to come back,” Rory supplies slowly, “after summer.”

For a minute, Jess stares at her, in that disarming, unnerving way he’s fond of.

“Wouldn't be my first choice. As much as I just _love_ working at the diner, it’s not exactly a step forward.”

“Oh.” 

Rory laces her hands together, tucking them in her lap carefully. Rory wondered, in the weeks that Jess was gone, whether he would call one day and say goodbye to her for good, decide that California was where he was meant to be, and leave her behind. She wonders if this is that phone call, only worse, because it's face to face.

Slowly, Jess slides toward her, leaning in to kiss her temple, and Rory relaxes into his touch, resting her head on his shoulder. 

“I didn’t come here to ask Luke to take me back,” Jess tells her, his voice low, rumbling in his chest.

Rory breathes in deeply, exhales slow.

“So you came to say goodbye.” 

Jess sits up straighter, jolting Rory off his shoulder in the process. “No.”

“But you just said you didn’t want to come back.”

“Not if it means I have to work at and live above the diner,” Jess replies blithely. “I don’t want to stay with Luke. I didn’t say anything about saying goodbye.”

Bowing her head, Rory draws in on herself. A sort of ease surges through her, but it doesn’t quell the inherent unease of not knowing when she’d see him again. She prepares herself to ask him if he’s ever going to come back to Stars Hollow, readying herself to hear “I don’t know” from him _again_ , but it’s Jess that speaks first.

“After summer, I’ve got nowhere to go, nowhere to be. I could bribe Jimmy into letting me stay longer, but I told Luke I’d pick up my car at some point. I have to come back whether I want to or not. But I’m not…” Jess trails, starting over. “I’m not living here. I’ll go to New York, maybe. Drive around the coast, do whatever I feel like doing.”

Rory swallows, an image of Jess sleeping in the back of his car like a drifter popping into her head. “Like a rolling stone? You’ll be happy like that?”

“Happier than I would be in this loony bin. I’ll be fine, alright. I told you before, I’ll make my way.” Jess clears his throat, stretching an arm across the back of the bench. “I’ll visit you, when you come back. You said your little Europe escapade ends in the last week of July?” 

Alongside the pinprick of sadness Rory feels at Jess’ refusal to stay in Stars Hollow comes the stubborn budding of hope. 

“Yup. The 27th.”

Jess pretends to be pensive. “Okay. Maybe we’ll cross paths.”

Hope blossoms into assurance. They’re on the same page about one thing—- they’re not saying goodbye.

Rory doesn’t let her relief show. Instead, she rolls her eyes at Jess’ forced attempt to be cool, and in an uncanny display of childishness, Jess beams at her, mocking her with an exaggerated eye roll. Rory pulls a sad expression in retaliation, and Jess gives her another, more authentic eye roll.

Grumbling about her silliness, he tugs Rory into his side once more, pressing a kiss to the crown of her head.

“Who knows,” he mumbles into her hair before pulling away, “I might just show up at your door one day and ask to crash on your couch.”

Rory peeks up at him. “At Yale?”

Jess lets out a short, embarrassed laugh. “Yes. But don’t expect me to sit around making friendship bracelets with your roommates. I’m gonna be there for you, nobody else.”

It’s a promise, in its own way. 

Rory smirks, tucking a curl behind his ear, a thrill running through her when Jess bites his lip, gaze unfocused. She’d forgotten how easily the mood could shift between them.

“Just me?” Rory asks teasingly.

“Just you,” Jess affirms, tilting his head toward hers.

Rory follows the way his eyes jump around, hungry and desperate. She threads her fingers through the hair at the back of his neck, moves closer until she can’t quite decipher his features. She listens as his breathing slows, and at the last moment, she kisses him on the cheek, leaning back to see a satisfying blush splashed across his face.

Cocky, Rory grins. “You say that now, but look at Lane and Dave. You came around.”

“They’re different,” Jess jeers, trying to cover up his sudden sheepishness.

“How?”

Jess barks out a laugh. “Different in the same way anybody else would call that stunt you just pulled ‘cute.’ Personally, I’d call it kinda mean, but I’m letting it slide. They’re the exception, not the rule.”

He meets Rory’s eye and doesn’t look away. 

He’s steady, a trademark smirk playing on his face.

Suddenly, the tables have turned, and it’s Rory’s turn to be bashful, her cockiness snuffed out.

Jess peers at her, reaching up to tug on his lips, like he’s attempting to get rid of his smile through force. Watching him try to suppress his amusement, Rory finds herself doing the same.

“I thought we were on the same page, pal,” Rory responds innocently, "that was a textbook lead-in for a cheek kiss."

Jess clicks his tongue, but his eyes are shining, mirthful. “Bull.”

Their bickering melts into laughter, which melts into kissing-- unexpected, breathless, passionate-- the way it always is between them. Easy.

Eventually, they leave the gazebo, holding hands down the steps and exchanging their parting words in the grass.

Rory savors their goodbye, deciding not to push Jess to leave in an attempt to spare herself further pain, as she had last time they went separate ways. She tries to catalog Jess like snapshots in a scrapbook: his hand in hers, the arrogant quirk of his mouth, his gentle gaze. 

She tucks these pieces in the back of her mind, saves them for a rainy day in Paris, Rome, Prague.

She knows it’s not forever, just a few months until she sees him again, but nevertheless, summer seems to roll out in front of her, endless. Somehow, knowing he’s going to return makes her want to turn to clocks forward, rush through the days. She’s had a taste of him again, and she doesn’t want to forget it.

She hugs him one last time and starts to leave, heart heavy, her legs only just holding her upright.

“Wait.”

Rory turns without thinking, swaying on the edge of the sidewalk. Jess has his hands in his pockets, a street lamp behind him haloing his head like a crown.

His mouth is just barely upturned, as if there’s something he finds funny. 

“I love you.”

There’s a stretch of time that goes on forever, Jess’ words hanging in the balance, frozen.

It feels like there are miles between them.

Rory tries to speak, but the sole thought that comes to mind is the passage Jess had marked in Emma, the confession she’d read so many times since Jess had left. The line that arranges itself in front of her isn’t the iconic “If I loved you less, I might be able to talk about it more” declaration, but the one that follows it. 

_But you know what I am._

Jess had never been eager to be vulnerable, but the smallest of admissions felt like an unmasking, an unveiling of his most guarded thoughts.

She’s looking at Jess as though looking through a magnifying glass, seeing every fault, every act of kindness—- every fiber of his being, grotesquely exposed for Rory to see. 

Rory herself feels discombobulated, taken apart with 3 simple words; a confession.

A confession that, apparently, had been one of his well-protected secrets, but somehow, Rory feels as if she’s known it all along. This secret had been hidden in plain sight: in borrowed CDs, in late night phone calls, in the margins of books.

There’s no need for him to prove it, for her to question it. Jess wouldn’t say it for nothing, and she knows it. She knows _him_.

“See you when you come back from Europe,” Jess murmurs, when Rory doesn’t answer. 

His mouth twitches upward a little more, and then he turns on his heel and heads toward the diner.

Rory watches his back, watches him get farther away. She considers running after him, but she can’t move a muscle. The only thing she can do is stand there and let him go, for now. 

Everything in her life felt like “for now.” 

She had the freedom to go traipsing across Europe, for now. She lived with her mother, her best friend, for now. She was Rory Gilmore, Chilton valedictorian, for now. In four years, she would be Rory Gilmore, Yale graduate.

Her life would change, and the world would continue to turn.

Opportunities would either be seized or missed for the rest of her life, and it would be up to her to decide which ones she would let pass her by.

She could take this chance, or she could leave it.

Jess is at the diner door reaching up for the spare key when Rory realizes she doesn’t want to miss this chance, doesn’t want to wait three months for another opportunity to say it back.

She shouts Jess’ name across the distance, her voice echoing through the vacant streets.

He twists around at the sound of her voice, like a flower to the sun. His face is only partially visible in the half light of the diner, but his gaze is clear, curious, his mouth a hard pressed line.

The space between them becomes mere inches.

Rory’s heart skips, sending a tremor through her. The words are quiet, barely loud enough for Rory to hear them herself, but she says them.

_I love you._

As if Rory has screamed it from the rooftops, Jess smiles.

He disappears inside the diner, and Rory waits until the lights cut out in the apartment before she walks away.

For now, Rory would roam. She would explore a whole world outside of her perfect bubble, but she would always return to where she felt safe and understood— to her home, to the people that made her feel that way.

To Jess.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I want to thank every one of you who left comments and kudos, who subscribed to this story, bookmarked it, simply read it all the way to the end. Regardless of whether you liked my take on s3, thank you. This is the first ever writing project that I’ve posted on a public forum, as well the first I’ve completed in full. It’s not the greatest, but regardless, it’s been a very long time since I’ve enjoyed writing anything so much. I didn’t think this would get that much attention, so to see it receive any kind of attention, whether in the form of kudos or comments, has been incredible. I’m so grateful.
> 
> Thank you, a thousand times over.
> 
> *if you want, you can follow me on tumblr @peachyjude!


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